


Sure of the Fall

by kapakoscheisigma



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Dubious Consent, First Person Narration, M/M, Spoilers, dead person narration, death isn’t at all what was expected, descriptions of a body in a post-mortem and scene of crime context, inspired by the music of Laurence Fox!, possible murder, possible suicide, some mentions of past childhood abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-10 16:43:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 14
Words: 41,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kapakoscheisigma/pseuds/kapakoscheisigma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hathaway is heartbroken by the way Lewis has got together with Hobson, with not a word or him, an explanation of even an apology. He can’t bear it.</p>
<p>But did he jump or was he pushed?</p>
<p>This is Hathaway’s last crime he has to solve. His own possible murder.</p>
<p>Spoilers for the whole of season seven, The Mind has Mountains, The Dead of Winter, The Point of Vanishing, Life Born of Fire and possibly other little titbits I can’t remember now in the text.</p>
<p>I’ve not tagged this as Midsomer Murders so not to disappoint the Midsomer fans; as the characters are quite definitely guest starring in the Lewis ’verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note 1: This story is in part inspired by the gorgeous song ‘So Be Damned’ by the lovely, talented, intelligent, beautiful Mr. Laurence Fox. But also by one of my father’s favourite films, ‘Sunset Boulevard’. Also, I was upset by the out come of season 7 and began to ask myself what if all the shipping of Lewis and Hathaway was also canon. It meant Lewis had not been very nice to Hathaway. And possible too much cheese at bedtime as this started as a nightmare of Hathaway falling...
> 
> Note 2: This is my first Lewis work to take a dark turn – I normally restrict my dark works to Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures, the X-Files and Star Trek: Deep Space 9. Apologies if I accidentally offend anyone with this. Please pay attention to all the trigger warning tags.
> 
> Note 3: Many thanks to asparagusmama for the beta. Also for the cartographical and canonical corrections. All remaining mistakes are of course my own.

I’m a coward. I’m also stupid. I know it seems odd to say so. I’m known for my cleverness. I’m frequently told I’m far too clever for my own good. I have an almost photographic memory. I see and hear and observe so much all the time my brain can hurt from it. I have a fine degree from Cambridge and a string of ‘A’, ‘AS’ and GCSE examinations that got me there. I won an academic full scholarship and bursary to an expensive boys’ public school at the age of fourteen and before that a fully paid music scholarship after passing entrance exams to an equally expensive prep at eleven. You wouldn’t think I was stupid. But believe me, I am. I’m stupid in the affairs of the heart. Ridiculously stupid about men. Or perhaps I mean people? Once I thought I was dating a woman to convince myself – God even? – and certainly my work colleagues and boss – especially my boss, although he didn’t even notice I was dating! – that I was straight. Or at least bisexual. Or even capable of a physical relationship. It didn’t work. Besides, it turned out I was the cloak of heterosexuality for a particularly ambitious lesbian who wished to remain firmly in the closet. All the way to the top, she’s aiming, no doubt about it.

Forgive me. In my current state I seem to see all my life in one big ball of mass of confusion. I lost my simile somewhere, didn’t I? I thought my life was – and would seem now – linear and make sense. But apparently Time isn’t like that. I also didn’t expect it to be like this at all. I was probably expecting judgement of some kind. Angels maybe? I think I might be expected to judge myself, but it doesn’t feel like that. Things don’t even seem sinful anymore, either. Other things do. Lying. I regret lying. Loving men? I’m not sure anymore about it. Forgive me. I’m a little dizzy and disorientated. Could I even possibly be concussed? Does that even make any sense?

Maybe I mean I was naive about relationships and men, not stupid?

But I digress. Because here I am. At another possible crime scene. Uniform is here, securing, waiting for all of us. CID, SOCO, pathologist. He is more than a little in shock himself. Poor sod. I don’t even know his name. Yet he knows mine.

The SOC: Another dead body. A young man, lying face down, head twisted at an unnatural angle, side of his head crushed, face still perfectly recognizable, if not perfect. His arms are flailed at impossible angles. Perhaps he flailed and thrashed about hopefully, as if he might slow his descent, as if he could somehow fly, as if he could fight against the inevitable. He's in a suit. An expensive suit. Maybe he couldn’t even afford it. One shoe has fallen off. It’s a rather lovely shoe, really. His favourites. I should know.

There’s the pathologist now. Odd, I’d have expected her to arrive with a certain detective inspector. He’s on call tonight. As am I. But I’m already here. Obviously.

She’s crouching down now. Any minute now she’s going to think she’s won him for good. She’s going to feel dreadful and guilty but she’ll know all that scrapping and bitching and cat fighting is over and done and she has really won. She’s also going to rule suicide.

She will be wrong on both counts.

So how did this happen? How did this naive, stupid coward of a young man, dressed so elegantly but so dishevelled and defiled, end up here: broken, smashed, dead in a pool of his own blood at the bottom of the Westgate car park with a note in his pocket addressed to his boss?

And here he comes now. I can see them. She stands, shaking her head as uniform restrains him, for his own good.

Don’t look Sir. Don’t look at him. This isn’t your fault. Despite what the letter will say.

She’s telling him. She’s handing him the note. Discreetly. Out of sight of uniform and approaching SOCO. Interesting.

He looks gutted. As if all hope and life is draining out of his face. He looks grey and old and sick. Did I intend this? Even for a moment? For him to feel so abandoned, guilty, shocked and broken?

I think for a while I did. In my hurt. He broke my heart. But I loved him in life. I still love him.

But I did change my mind. I changed my mind! Sir! I didn’t do this! I changed my mind.

All right. Fine. I chickened out. I think. Told you I was a coward.

They have the note.

They will rule suicide.

He will blame himself.

I’m sorry Sir. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t even do it!

~

Let’s go back then. To a few weeks ago. Longer? A couple of months even? Had I really taken so long to demand some form of explanation? Was I really such a... doormat?

After all that I had done, giving up my holiday, leaving those kids in the orphanage a few days earlier than intended, rushing across the Balkans, talking with scary foreign macho policemen! After all that...

I had walked home that afternoon from the pub, numb, carrying my backpack in front of me. I was hugging it tightly in fact. Innocent had followed me out. She touched my shoulder. Thanked me. Tried to make me take a taxi. She had been incredibly solicitous. Almost as if she had known.

I took the rest off my leave I’d booked off. I didn’t feel able to return to the others at the orphanage in Kosovo, there had seemed no point. Besides, the others, a ragbag mixture of students and young single professionals from churches and denominations all over Oxford, would want the gory details of the murders and the drug smuggling operation and manufacture. I couldn’t face that. I could not talk about Robert Lewis as if he were just my superior officer. It was unbearable. I would close my eyes and see the way Hobson looked at me before she kissed him.

It was triumphant.

But then he had kissed her back. Passionately.

I stayed in my flat for the rest of the week, listening to music, playing guitar, but mostly just staring into space. Sometimes my face was even wet with tears but I barely noticed the physicality of my pain. I couldn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t sleep. I ate little. Some days I forgot to eat entirely.

It played over and over. Dr. Hobson had kissed Lewis. On the mouth. A full snog. And she had, quite deliberately, looked at me, before launching herself at Robbie. As if she knew. As if she were staking her claim. As if she were gloating.

I had sometimes, because I love him so much and believed him to be mostly straight, and probably to convince myself how altruistic, how pure, how Biblically Agape my love was, and not the dark sinful lust I felt my love could be, I told him at times to ask Hobson out. Push him away. I didn’t mean it. Obviously. I’d probably pointed out too how much she liked him, fancied him, to punish myself, too. Not believing, as I often did in my self-doubt and despair, that I was worthy of him, that I deserved happiness.

My ending certainly hasn’t been happy.

Of course, I did push him away. Recent cases made me question my desertion of faith, even perhaps my vocation. I sometimes recently had been racked with guilt. How pointless and trivial and foolish it seems now. Am I burning in hell fire right now? No! I’m lost. So lost. And alone. But also, calm, seeing things in this foggy twisting ball of my life. But my intention was pure love, I dreamed of a proper committed relationship.

Not good enough for him though. Not at all.

Then all my self-hatred, low self-esteem, self-doubt in who I was, how I came to be. All not my fault, all entirely to blame on the adults around me as a small child. Maybe they deserve judgement for some of my sins? I think inside I was still such a small boy. I trusted him, and he let me down, and if I had jumped...?

But I didn’t! I DIDN’T!

Thought about it. Yes.

But I hadn’t meant it. Any of it. That my love was sinful, that I was scared of his touching me, that I wanted him to ask out Hobson. Especially that. I hadn’t meant that. I really hadn’t meant that. And I really hadn’t meant Lewis to make unreasonable demands on me and my time as my superior, asking me to cut short my holiday volunteering to drive over what felt like half way across Eastern Europe to work with some very scarily macho police officers who, in broken English, took the piss out of my genteel English ways in colourful homophobic phrases... I did it for love, not loyalty for my commanding officer or for justice, but for love. Because I loved him and he asked me. He asked me in a succession of flirtatious phone calls and texts and yet all the while he was already shagging Hobson. And I only had been out of the country a few days!

At least I assume they were shagging. Lewis was screwing Hobson now.

Lucky her.

I went back to work on the following Monday. Got on with work. Kept my head down. Was the exemplary sergeant. He seemed happy. And oblivious to any need for apology or explanation. Got me in on advice on cooking. He seemed so happy. I loved him. I tried to be happy. 

People at the station all seemed happy for him and Hobson too. All except DI Alan Peterson. I, having hidden my feelings for years, could easily recognize unrequited love in another. Poor Peterson, he had been smitten for years. He’d fallen head over heels with her the day he had met her. Poor unhappy sod.

Hobson had seemed happy to date him for a while, then dumped him and made cruel jokes at his expense. At the time I had been happy to join in with her and Lewis. How cruel of me. That I do regret. I regret it all. He will have to be told of my apparent suicide. It’s going to hurt him too. Another one who is going to unfairly blame themselves.

If I had noticed Peterson, then Gurdip had noticed me. He noticed how pale I was, even for me. How I was losing weight. He must have done. He kept popping by my office when my boss wasn’t around, and Lewis always seemed to be taking more and more days off and longer and longer lunch hours and packing up earlier and earlier. He kept being stood up too. Hobson is married first and foremost to her career!

But Gurdip was so kind. Gurdip who had been so interested a couple of years ago, Gurdip who shared my love of graphic novels and comic books and fantasy. He was always ‘just passing’ and always came bearing something for me to eat. He sat on my desk and talked about graphic novels and comic books, movies and TV sci-fi, fantasy novels and computer games. His Nanima – that is, maternal grandmother – had come down from Leicester to stay and was forever cooking and providing him with packed lunches to feed an army. He stayed talking until he was sure I had eaten it all – aloo tikkis, luddus, samosas, ras malai, pakoras, gulab jaman, the list of his proffered Indian snacks were endless. And almost tempting too. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Gurdip and his Namima’s cooking I might have starved for all the nutrition I was getting inside me at home. I might have had the odd slice of toast or biscuit and a cup of tea, but other than that I wasn’t even drinking. I sat and stared and felt like I would die of the pain when I was alone. At work I could see him, smell him, bask in his presence and convince myself he was an older heterosexual widower and deserved a chance at happiness I couldn’t give. Except, the dark jealous part of me, deep in my soul, tormented me with the observation that Val had been ‘the little woman at home’ and if he wanted someone to defer to him, to cook and clean and iron for him, then I was the much better choice than strong minded, out spoken, career orientated, independent Hobson. 

At the time I was just too numb and too much in pain inside to really appreciate what Gurdip was doing for me. One day, albeit cryptically; he even outright criticized Lewis’ treatment of me. At the time all I could think was that he knew and was criticizing me for somehow not being a proper man or some such. How I belittled myself even to the end. But that one day he had opened up. I had noticed the frisson between him and Julie and he confirmed it. He talked to me of being an oldest son, of that role, of all the cultural and religious expectations that fell on him as such. He talked of the dislike in his culture and caste of ‘darker skin’, how it indicated ‘low caste’ or even ‘untouchable’. He talked of the intense dislike of marrying out of one’s caste, let alone race. He confessed that he was a coward, but he was a dutiful son who would one day settle down and please his parents. Casual flings were okay as long as both sides knew it were just that, but he couldn’t hurt someone he loved when he couldn’t marry her. He was telling me he was in love with Julie but trapped by convention and culture and religion and family.

“I wouldn’t use her like that,” he said to me that lunch hour. “I respect her too much. What kind of low life uses someone for sex and has no intention of honouring her with a proper, public relationship?” Gurdip had concluded angrily, his gaze unconsciously going to His desk on the other side of the office. I had looked at him sharply and saw nothing but sympathy and compassion in his eyes.

He knew. He knew it all. I knew it was time. This avoiding it all and pretending nothing had ever happened and I, like everyone else, was pleased for DI Lewis and Dr. Hobson, had to stop.

That very evening I asked him again for a pint after work. This time I refused to take no for an answer. It was only a Thursday, what plans could he have, after all?

“You owe me an explanation. If not an apology!” I had said, hopefully quite forcefully. I fear I may have sounded more pathetic. I didn’t bother with the Sir. Why should I?

Robbie Lewis at least had the grace to finally look shame-faced. He looked away from me.

“In fact,” I pushed, “come over to mine. I’ll cook.”

“James, me and Laura...”

“Or I tell her!” Now I know I sounded whiney and spiteful, rather than the menacing blackmailer I’d intended, but it couldn’t be helped. I was angry, true, but also heart-broken and rejected.

“Fine. But tomorrow James, all right? Me and Laura are doing something tonight. Tomorrow. I’ll come over tomorrow. To explain. If I can James. Don’t know if apologies are in order, though. I always made it plain what was going on.”

That threw me, I remember. I stared at him, confused. Did I? How did I know what was going on? What did he mean? I thought we were together, but if he could dump me without a word and publicly start dating and kissing Hobson in front of me without a word then I obviously hadn’t a clue, he was playing our relationship by some rules I had no reference to.


	2. Chapter 2

The Inspector is talking on the phone. I can tell that the person is not too happy about being woken up in the early hours of the morning for a shout. Why keep dogs and bark yourself? But then he is naming the body. He is telling her it looks to be suicide. He’s asking to still be allowed to investigate.

Of course, he won’t be. But he can sort the pathologist and SOCO and uniform until a decent hour. She wants him in her office at eight.

Three hours.

Meanwhile Hobson is supervising the removal of the body from the cold concrete underneath the multi-storey car park.

“Be gentle with him,” Lewis calls to her, his voice breaking.

“Of course Robbie.” She squeezes his arm gently. He pulls away.

“Sir?” It’s John, one of the SOCOs.

“What?” he snaps. Wow, he is on edge.

“His other shoe. We can’t find it. Can we go to the top floor and secure where he jumped? His shoe should be on the ground if he jumped. Why take off one shoe before he jumped?”

“But we’re sure he jumped?”

“Robbie,” Hobson says suddenly. “His eyes were open. Jumpers close them. Or tend to.”

I see him finger the letter in his pocket before he tells John to find and secure where the victim fell and to find that other bloody Jimmi Choo.

They all look at him. “Well, they aren’t just bloody shoes, are they?” he snaps, and I hear him mutter as he gets into his car, “I should know, cost me a bloody fortune spoiling the bitch.”

Bitch! Bitch! I almost wish I had bloody jumped after all you fucking bastard!

~

Lewis arrived at my flat on the dot of seven carrying flowers. A cheap bunch of dyed carnations picked up from a petrol station. He’d even left on the label. I didn’t know if it made it better or worse, to be honest.

Worse, I decided, as I checked on the vegetables in the kitchen. I’d decided to make him a pie. He likes pies. Lentil soup followed by steak and mushroom pie with mixed vegetables. Simple English fare that he loved so much. Why? Perhaps I was hoping the way to a man’s heart is his stomach. Perhaps I was still competing with Hobson, even then? I’d even considered making a Plum Duff for dessert, but the only previous time I’d made it he’d told me it wasn’t as good as his ‘Mam’s’.

Better. I changed my mind as I arranged them in a vase of water and found three expensive red roses studded among the cheap carnations.

“You could have warned me,” I finally said, after we had finished the food and drunk the wine. I hadn’t known how to ask. He had behaved as he always did, as my friend and boss, except sometimes, in the past, over the past year and a half, more than boss, more than friend. He had said very little himself over the meal, only work related matters.

“Make us a coffee. Then we’ll talk,” he said, pushing his plate away and getting up. He sat in my chair, I noticed, not on the sofa as he usually did, taking over the middle as he did in his own flat. I made him coffee, and as I did so I finished off the wine in my kitchenette. Then I decided on Scotch rather than coffee, then changed my mind and tipped my whiskey into my coffee.

“What happened?” I asked gently, the sort of tone I’d used with suspects and witnesses. It was not lost on Lewis. He glared at me. I gave him his coffee and tried to smile. It was probably more a painful grimace. I curled up on the sofa and began sipping my whisky-laced coffee. He still glared for a while before he spoke.

“What do you mean, what happened?”

“I thought we... I mean, I just go away and...”

“Yeah.” He seemed to be sneering. I didn’t understand why. “You went away all right. With the church lad, remember? Without telling me in fact. More of you damn lies James, more of your damn lies. Cheatin’ on me with God, weren’t you?”

“And that justifies...?”

“You were the one always telling me to get together with Laura.”

“I wasn’t. You kept telling me to find someone my own age.”

“But you left me for God.”

“I didn’t!” I yelled. I was alarmed at how high my voice had gone with stress. I’d gone to help build an orphanage that Oxford’s churches had raised the money for, not run away and entered a monastery!

“Oh. Right!” Why was he angry? He knows how I dislike it when he raises his voice. What have I done to make him so angry, he’s the one who deserted me! “You nearly fucking died right in front of me, right? I wanted you after so badly and you...”

Oh. You say no to sex once and he dumps you. Without telling you! Is that what he means? Surely not...? “I had things to work out.” My voice was quiet now. I hate it when he shouts. He reminds me of Dad. “The case unsettled me. And I didn’t nearly die.”

“We both thought you were a gonna. If it hadn’t been for that damn neck brace...”

“Well, I didn’t die.” I have now. “But I wish to God I had done!” I don’t now. Be careful what you wish for...

“James!” Lewis stood up, horrified at what I’d just said then. He came and sat beside me on my sofa.

I looked down and spoke even more quietly. I was scared of the answer but I had to know, he had to tell me, to explain, what I needed to know. “Why didn’t you tell me? Even dumping me by text would have been kinder. Or did you think I wouldn’t have chased have way across East Europe for you if you had?”

“I meant to tell you. When you got home.”

“Snogging Hobson was one way of telling me, that’s for sure!” I snorted horribly at him. I had the right, didn’t I? All the anger, all the fight, had gone out of me now. I just felt sick with misery and pain. And it was a real, tangible pain in my chest. A great heaviness within me. Unbearable.

“I’m sorry about that. I am. It’s not what I planned. I didn’t see you pet, I didn’t, I swear. It was Laura. I doubt she saw you either, although she doesn’t know – you know, about us. But we shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have. Hell! It’s not even me. I didn’t even snog Val like that in pubs and that.”

“So you are sorry for that, at least?” I asked pathetically. My voice didn’t really sound like my own, so small and unhappy.

“You always knew that you and I were...”

“Were what Sir? What were we? You told me you were straight, but you still had me, didn’t you? We... made love. You made love to me.”

“We were... what is that phrase? Friends with benefits. I’d like to think we were still friends James?” He even sounded hopeful.

“Friends with benefits?” I rolled the phrase around with the contempt and disgust it deserved.

“Yeah. Back in my day we used to say ‘fuck buddies’. Crude but true.”

“What? What?” My voice was rising again with anger and hurt. “Do you really think that was what this was for me? Sir! I love you. I love you!” I was shrieking now, I’m ashamed to remember. “You were the first man – the first person – I – I – I... was training to be a priest! I still believe! I still go to Mass! Did you really think I’d have such an immoral, loose attitude to what we did? ‘Friends with benefits’? Whose benefit? You just mean you were using me for sex until someone better came along, don’t you? Get out! Get out of here! Get out of my home! Now!”

“James. James! Calm down. Please. I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t know. Oh. Come here.” And he was reaching out to me, pulling me into an awkward hug, stroking my back and shoulder in little circles, his other hand then started to stroke my hair, running fingers, making it stick up on end, they way he always liked to in bed, afterwards. I started to cry. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stop myself. I tried to hide it but there were great big embarrassing tears splashing on to his shoulder and neck. My breath was snuffling and I was practically hiccupping against him with the effort not to bloody cry. I hated to appear so weak and vulnerable, especially after what he had said to me, but I felt like my heart was breaking. I didn’t even believe he didn’t know how I felt about him and our... relationship? Whatever it was, whatever he defined it as. A big secret, that I always knew.

I wanted to remain strong, to pull away and tell him to go away again, but I couldn’t. I was so weak, so needy, and so desperate for any crumbs of his attention that came my way I started to yield. However much I told myself to remain stiff and unyielding and not respond to this comfort my body relaxed next to his, curled into him, I even lifted my legs so I was half in his lap like a big child desperate for comfort. And yet the comfort was for the hurt he caused.

Eventually he tipped up my head by my chin and wiped a tear away from my cheek with his thumb. “There now,” he said. “No more tears James. We’re friends aren’t we? And am I straight? God knows how we started this thing. I guess no-one is 100% anything, are they? What about you and Fiona? Or Scarlett?”

I sighed. “I don’t think I’ve ever said I was a hundred percent anything. But I don’t know. I only kissed them. I’ve only kissed other men, too, at Cambridge, before taking a vow of celibacy.” Well, there was Tom, but that was complicated and we never did anything involving penetration. “You were the first and only...” And he was, really. Absolutely. I’ve never, not with anyone. He was so kind and gentle. Well, I thought. But he was angry again!

“Stop it James! I won’t believe it! You were nearing bloody thirty when we started shagging! I refuse to believe...”

He doubts me. How dare he! I pulled away and stared at him levelly. “You. Were. The. First. And only. I love you. I’d hoped...” For what? Living together? Marriage? Well, civil partnership? Although, by the time he retired it could be marriage!

Well, yes I had hoped exactly that. Stupid, naive me.

“James,” he was saying, stroking my cheek where his thumb had been after wiping my tears, “I’m straight,” he contradicted himself. What was I to believe? “This has been fun pet, but I never said it was permanent. I’m about to bloody retire, I’m not about to ‘come out’ to me family or work mates, am I? There’s no point, I’m not even gay.”

“But you... but we...” I gave up. What could I say? I tried to pull away from him, to get up and walk away as he no had no intention of leaving my flat. He grabbed my wrist, my arm, restraining me with a tight grip of both of his hands and pulled me to him, back down. He hurt enough to bruise but I didn’t let him know that.

“I never meant to hurt you,” he said, not understanding my ironic snort as his fingers bit into me. “I thought you were having fun, too. I never thought you wanted more.”

“More than sex, do you mean?” I struggled to make my voice cold. I was feeling cold inside again, cold and numb. Had I really been so blind to what was going on? “Has it only been sex?” I needed clarification. I thought we had had a proper relationship. “We went for pints...”

“As workmates.”

“And shared takeaways.”

“As friends.”

“I cooked for you. I tried to teach you to cook.”

“As me friend.”

“You stayed over.”

“When I was too pissed to get home.”

“I stayed at yours. I was often at your place.”

“When you were too pissed. You came round as me sergeant too, nothing more James. Then as me mate.”

“But you fucked me!” So much for a cold, calm voice, I was yelling again.

He stared at me for a while. I was shaking. I could feel myself shake. He must have been able to, he still held my arm. He looked away. Ashamed? I don’t know. “Yeah,” he replied softly. “I did. You offered.”

“Because I love you,” I replied sadly. What was the point in telling him he came around after the poor mad woman Bethan Vickery had knifed him? That he had told me kissing Hobson had felt a bit like snogging his sister and had made a move on me as soon as his shoulder had healed? That he had brought me flowers, chocolate and wine, came with condoms and lube all prepared just expecting me to fall into bed?

Well, he had obviously changed his mind about Hobson.

“Do you love her? Dr. Hobson?”

He let go of my arm and held my face firmly, making sure I had to look in his eyes. I suppose I could have closed them, but my gaze was caught by the intensity in his blue eyes. He was burning with unshed tears. There was something he was trying to tell me in what he wasn’t saying. What? He stroked my cheek again. “Oh James!” he said sadly. “I quite like her. I’m awful fond of you. I loved my Val so much, and I don’t think I’ll ever love someone like that again.” He had stopped his gentle caresses and held my face firmly in both his hands now, looking so deeply into mine. He looked so sad. “Thing is, I’m ready to move on. I’m so tired of being alone. I want a marriage. I want all the little things I had with Val. Not just the sex. I can’t have that with you. I’m not ... gay.”

“You want a wife?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Dr. Hobson is a strong minded, independent woman married to her career. If you want someone to wash your socks and iron your shirts, cook for you, keep house, put YOU first, then I would be more suitable that HER!!! I would...”

“James.” He said it so forcefully he just shut me up. It was definitely a commanding, work tone. “I’m not gay. I can’t...”

I had had enough. I knew what he wasn’t telling me and I was so angry. I wasn’t even the only one being used here and I did like and respect her, for all the insensitivity she had shown me of late. “You mean,” I shouted, “you don’t want the world to know you’re bisexual!”

“James. I’m sorry. Maybe I’m too old. I can’t...”

He looked so guilty and ashamed, perhaps even afraid, all the fight and anger went out of me. “I’d be anything for you, I’d...” I was thinking of Feardorcha Phelan but there was no way I would go through with something so extreme, but I was desperate now. Pathetic! And as I was wondering what he meant he said, “S’sh. I’m sorry,” and leaned forward and was kissing me. Before I could think of anything rational, could pull away and demand what he was doing since he had just dumped me and was with Hobson now, my body reacted. I parted my lips to allow his tongue access, flicking my own tongue on his bottom lip. He still held my face in his hands and his right thumb caressed my cheek as we kissed but then he moved the other hand to the back of my head, holding me in place, as if he expected me to pull away and bolt at any moment.

Which I did as soon as my brain kicked in, I struggled mentally with myself and then began to struggle physically against him, trying to escape his grip. As I jerked my head away he bit down on my bottom lip, drawing blood. I seriously doubt he meant to do that but I put my fingers to my lips, as I demanded, “What the fuck are you doing? Less than a month ago you were snogging Hobson in front of everyone! You just told me it was over and now you’re...?”

“Comforting you. I don’t want to hurt you James. I said, I’m awful fond of you love. Maybe I rushed things with Laura.”

“You’re comforting me?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re confusing me.”

“Come here.” He took my face in his hands again and kissed me aggressively, licking up the blood he caused. I was alarmed by his force and struggled a while, before yielding to being kissed, caressed, to being manoeuvred by him to lie down under him, crying as his hands, then mouth found their way in my clothes, undressing me, kissing me, his mouth moving from stomach to chest, nipping a nipple before sucking at the hollow of my neck. I loved him so much, I wanted to shut my eyes and pretend I’d not seen him kiss Hobson, not listened to all the gossip at the station, not given him advice on how to cook a roast for her, not listened to all he had just said to me. Just blot out the past month as an aberration, a blip, a temporal anomaly. Perhaps I fell through a hole in space-time and ended up in the wrong universe? The pockets of air pressure we hit on the way back from Sarajevo kicked me into a parallel dimension and I’d just found my way back home?

But I knew that was nonsense. A stupid fantasy to justify taking this comfort. As he sat up, straddling me and pulling off my t-shirt I protested lamely, “Sir, we shouldn’t...” But he put a finger to my lips.

“S’sh. You love it. I can make you feel nice, can’t I? You want me to, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said weakly.

“Come on then,” he climbed off me and the sofa and stood up. He held out his hand. “Come on love. Let’s go to bed.”

Against my better judgement, I agreed. I loved him so much, was so desperate not to lose him, I swallowed all pride and all hope and accepted the comfort on offer. I tried not think about Hobson or all he had said. Maybe it was just a chance to say goodbye properly, but I was going to take it. Pathetic, I know.

Pathetic, stupid and naive. Weak. A coward. That’s who I am.


	3. Chapter 3

How did I get here? I seem to have blanks. I don’t remember travelling. I remember Himself and his horrid comment about me. Has he read the letter? Will he cry? Have they found the shoe? Will they find the crime scene? Or did the bastards clear it up? Will there be any forensic evidence to link them and their cheap booze, fags and weed to me and what they did? Will they decide I jumped anyway? Defiled and jumped? I can’t really remember so well. Maybe I did jump after all? With one shoe? My head hurts. Well, no it can’t, can it? I don’t have a head, really.

It suddenly brightens. Dr Hobson has switched on a light. We’re in the mortuary. The clock says it’s 7am. The officer who arrived after the poor street cleaner who found the body said it was 5am? What time did I fall? I got up to the top at the Westgate at just gone 11. There were few cars and people. I waited and I sat on the edge, looking down, afraid. I climbed off and there they were. Laughing at me. Drunk. But what time was that? How long have I been like this? And what is this? Some kind of limbo? I’m not in hell, thank God, nor purgatory. I’m still here! Watching...

Hobson has pulled back the sheet and is looking down at the... at my body. She is stroking my hair.

“Oh James. I’m so sorry. I knew you loved him. I never would have thought...”

I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to watch her do this. I don’t like it anyway at work but I certainly don’t want to see what I look like on the inside. I have to get away. I have to... open the door? How can I open the door? Can I just walk through it? Can I? I’ll just try to...

Ow!

Okay. But I’m spirit. I don’t exist.

My head tingles. It tickles. It hurts. No, don’t look, it has nothing to do with that little electric saw in Dr. Hobson’s hands.

The buzzing is urgent though.

Oh! I’m at work. I just sort arrived here.

Not my corridor. Not my floor.

I’m at the door of DI Peterson’s office. He’s hunched over his desk. He’s in work early.

Shit! He’s crying.

Alan...

I feel so helpless. We took the piss. Action Man. But actually, he was a nice, decent bloke. A good father, certainly. When he was sober he told me all about his kids, all five of them. And drunk and maudlin he missed them as much as Hobson broke his heart.

Okay, so he’s standing. Wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand and sniffing. Where is he going?

I follow him down the corridor and up the stair well and up another corridor and here we are, knocking at Chief Superintendent Innocent’s office. The secretary is showing him in. Sandra, isn’t it? Her eyes are red too.

A bunch of screwed up tissues are in the bin and Innocent’s eyes are red and swollen too. There’s a lot of crying going on.

“Ma’am. About me leading this investigation.”

“If there is one. It looks like a suicide. We have to wait for the pathologist to rule. I should never have...”

“What Ma’am?”

“I pushed him. He wanted to resign. I persuaded him to stay. I couldn’t persuade him to go for inspector but I knew Midsomer were advertising for a new DS in Causton CID and I suggested a change of location, away from personal...”

“From Lewis Ma’am?”

“It wasn’t that, was it? That poor lad he found. The one who hanged himself?”

“I can’t lead it Ma’am.”

“Alan. Why?”

“I... I... Oh God! This is my fault!”

No it isn’t Alan. No it isn’t! You were kind. We were drunk! It was my fault. Please...

Oh! I seem to be back here. Don’t look at the body, don’t look...

It’s eight thirty now. Where did the time go? He’s here. Wasn’t he supposed to see Innocent at eight? What is he playing at? He’ll get a reprimand if he’s not careful. I think Hobson thinks so too.

“Robbie. There’s no way Jean will let you lead on this.”

“Laura. I have to know. And until I’m in that meeting with her and she tells me – to me face – that I’m not in charge then I am. I was on call, his body discovered on my watch. I owe it to the lad to know. Was it suicide?”

“Do you doubt it? You have the note. But no one knows about that but you and me, do they? Why are you holding on that?”

“It’s personal. Private. And if you rule suicide then I’ll hand it in as evidence, but if the boy changed his mind and fell – or was pushed. Laura, SOCO found stuff up on the roof.”

“What ‘stuff’?”

“Lager cans, cider bottles, fag butts and roach ends. Skateboard skid marks. Scuffed up ground around where he may have fallen. His shoe. Blood that I’m betting is a match for his. Vomit too. And splashes of lager and cider. Splashes of something else, too. Spunk, SOCO reckon. They’ve taken samples of it all for the lab.”

Hobson sighs deeply. “Okay. You won’t like this Robbie.”

“What?”

“Signs of sexual activity. Several sexual activities in the last 24 hours of so.”

He pales. He gulps. “Several?” he asks neutrally.

“I know. It doesn’t sound like our uptight, celibate James, does it? All with men, I add. Does that surprise you?”

He shrugs and shakes his head. “Does it you?”

She shakes her head. “No really. Do you really want to do this? Some of what I’ve found sounds like it’s going to tally with the scene of crime forensics. But it still doesn’t prove he didn’t jump, afterwards.”

“Just tell me Laura.”

“Fine. In the reverse order of timings then. So, probably less than an hour before death he had oral sex. I have good samples of the seminal fluid in his stomach; the stomach acid had hardly got to work. Certainly more than one man’s. Three or four even. Lab results should be able to separate and get DNA fingerprinting done. But don’t hold your breath with so much to separate and the stomach acid. Not much else in his stomach. He’d been drinking solidly for a day, I would guess. Gin. Whisky. Beer. And tea. Sugared tea. But not much else at all.”

“Oh James. Do you think he consented?”

“To an oral gangbang? James?! There are signs of bruising to the oesophagus. He’d vomited too, which tallies with SOCO’s findings. And there was no indication of any form of reciprocation. He didn’t... enjoy it. He didn’t orgasm, to put it crudely.”

“Is that it then?”

“No. A few hours before death he had anal sex. Passive. He took Robbie.”

He shrugs, like he’s not being told something he doesn’t know. Which he isn’t, of course.

“With a condom, a lubricated condom but from the perforations and tears, very little else in the way of lubrication was used. Possibly salvia. I’ve taken swabs so we may get a DNA profile from it.”

“Non consensual?”

“Harder to tell. Rough sex. He may have sort of consented, drunk as he was. They may not have had lube to hand and decided to go for it anyway. But it’s not my job to speculate, just give the facts.”

“And the rest?” he looks pale now, sick at heart. He’s going to have to tell her. Her or Innocent or both. And then he will be damn well be out of more than leading this, you can bet.

“He’d previously had anal sex, again the passive partner, a little more than 24 hours before his death. Friday night, I would guess.” She’s staring at him. She’s already guessed. Fuck, this woman is good. I’ve always respected her.

“Yeah?”

“Without a condom, but with lots of lube. Both lube and seminal fluid splattered on rectum walls. I should not only be able to get you a DNA profile but brand and type of the lube, too.”

“Really?”

They stare at each other.

He looks away first. “Laura...”

“Yes?”

“It’s mine.”

“Which?”

“The spunk. In him. I fucked him, okay. It was a goodbye, comfort thing. I never really told him about us, I hadn’t actually...”

“Dumped him? What am I Robbie? Your beard?”

“My what?”

“Your nice respectable badge of heterosexuality while you shag your pretty boy sergeant half your age?”

“No, Laura, I like you. I just wasn’t ready before. James and me, well, it was just sex. Friends with benefits. Isn’t that what’s it’s called?”

“No, Robbie, that’s what we were called. But not only is the sex done, but I don’t think I can call you my friend anymore. Poor, romantic, vulnerable, innocent James. He adored you. I thought it was all one sided, but if that devout Catholic, messed up, trusting boy let you inside him, defying his deeply held religious beliefs, then he loved you more than anything. He wasn’t having a bit of fun with a friend. He trusted you. If I had known for one second that you and him had anything physical going on I would never have ever moved in on his territory. Oh God, the poor boy... Get out of here Robbie. And if you haven’t told Jean by the end of the day that it is your DNA inside him I will.”

“Laura...?”

“Go! Now!”

He storms out and I follow him. He goes straight into the gents and vomits and vomits and vomits until he has nothing to bring up. He rinses his mouth and leans over the basin, looking at this reflection.

“Robbie Lewis, you total bastard!” he spits out at his reflection. And then the tears come. Horrible, big, gut wrenching sobs. He rushes to the cubicle and locks himself in. I can’t see him and I’m such a crap ghost I can’t follow. I don’t know how to walk through doors and walls.

Ghost!

Is that what I am?

I suppose I am.

My ‘head’ tingles again.

I’m back in the Chief’s office. Her desktop monitor says its 0719. But it was gone eight thirty. I’ve moved in Time as well as Space? What am I now?

“Why Alan? I know you run a specialized unit here, but you led murders up in Gateshead. You have a glowing recommendation in your file and reference.”

“Personal involvement Ma’am.”

“How personal?”

“James and I, we... well, we got drunk and it seemed like the right thing to do. You know, when you’re pissed and you do stupid things, right? He loves Inspector Lewis, Ma’am, and I’m more than a little in love with Laura Hobson. We just met up and started drinking. We went back to mine and drank some more. I’ve never, ever even been with a bloke before but...”

Innocent sighed. “You had sex.”

“Well... yeah. I can’t even remember which one of us decided to get together to make them jealous, but...”

“When did he leave you?”

“About nine in the evening.”

“How did he seem?”

“Oh God.” He takes a moment to compose himself. “If I could go back in time, Ma’am. He was guilt ridden, distraught. Neither of us normally do one night stands, but he was... didn’t I hear he used to be a priest?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“He ran out, so upset. I should have gone after him, I should have...”

“We could never know he was suicidal Alan.”

“But ma’am...”

“What?”

“I should have guessed. I should have gone after him. I’m a detective.”

“What?”

“His arms. The top of his thighs. Cigarette burns and cuts. Fresh ones, hours old in some cases.”

“He’d been self-harming? Oh James... I should have noticed.”

“There’s something else.”

“What?”

“When we met up, I thought like me it was unrequited love that caused him so much pain.”

“But?”

“But, from what I could gather, for the past eighteen months or so, Lewis and he have had a sexual relationship. Lewis wanted it kept secret, and he, from what I could guess at from his drunken ramblings, still wanted James on the side occasionally. No commitment, just sex, while the world thought he was happy with Hobson. I always thought Lewis such a nice bloke.”

Innocent looks deep in thought. Eventually she says, “He is. Just deeply messed up, I think. I need to wait on SOCO and the post mortem, but I think I need to bring in someone from another station to head this. I think we are all too personally involved with this. Do you want to take the day off?”

“With respect, Ma’am, I just want to throw myself into my work. We’ve had information that the extremist group over at Reading University is in infiltration of the nice liberal Islamic Soc at Brookes. I need to get one of my people inside.”

“Isn’t that MI5?”

“We all work together on this. Laxton and I have been doing some great work with the whole community here on prevention and awareness of domestic violence. Our source is one of the local imams. He’s deeply concerned.”

“Fine. I’ll leave you to it. Keep me informed if you need uniform.”

“And Ma’am, you will let me know – the pathologist’s ruling on James, whether he...?”

“I think I might have to do a whole station briefing. We’re all in shock here.”

Are they? I thought they took the piss out of me.

He goes and she puts her head on her desk and cries.


	4. Chapter 4

I never thought about it. All the PM results, all the times in all the murder investigations that Hobson said to us he or she had had sex, had this done to them, that done to them. I never really thought about that person, their partner, how when they made love they never knew it was for the last time.

Well, I thought I knew that it was one last time. The ‘comfort’ that he was offering. I should have declined. Where was my pride? I was so stupid. I understand that. I should have stuck to my guns and thrown him out. But we do desperate things when our hearts are breaking.

We undressed. He lay down and let me cover him in kisses, travelling all over his body. Not just kissing, but licking, even sniffing. Breathing in his scent, every part of him, tasting him, remembering it all, trying to imprint it in my mind, store it in my brain to never forget what he felt like, smelt like, tasted like. The love of my life. The man I gave everything to.

After a while, when he was rock hard and had stopped me going down on him twice already, he laughed and said, “Are you ready James? You better be ready because I am.” He braced my shoulders and flipped us over so he was lying on top of me. He kissed me on my mouth, hard, his tongue imitating what he planned. I tried to kiss back, to lose myself in the sensation, but tears came to my eyes again, because this was the last time.

“Oh James my love,” he kissed away the tears. “Don’t cry, pet, don’t cry. I do love you.”

Then he looked horrified, angry with himself for betraying himself.

“You do?”

He ignored me and reached to my bedside table, to its top drawer. “Where’s the bloody lube gone?”

“Um. I threw it away.”

“What? Why?”

“I thought you didn’t want me anymore. I thought you were with Hobson.”

“Well, bloody find it or something, I’m going to have you with or without.”

Comforting myself with the secret thought he was angrier with himself and he did love me I got up and rifled through the wastepaper basket next to the nightstand. There it was, at the bottom, under countless screwed up snot and tear stained tissues, a scrunched up empty cigarette packet, a half eaten biscuit and an empty crisp packet. I handed it to him and got back on the bed. He smiled and kissed me again, his hand on my chest pushing me back to lie back. I tried to forget Hobson, forget the things he said. I smiled back and spread my legs, bringing my knees up. His shouting at me, the reality of this ‘goodbye’ hitting me, I had begun to grow limp but I knew his fingers in me would sort that out. I didn’t want to lose him, I didn’t want to...

I closed my eyes and gave myself over to the sensation. In no time at all everything had telescoped down to the feeling of his fingers moving, stretching me open, teasing my prostrate. The feel of my cotton sheets as I gripped them and squirmed on them. His other hand, warm, resting on my thigh. No time. No feelings. No thoughts. Just this. And then he spoke.

“You are so lovely like this James. I’d forgotten how beautiful you are, at how tight you feel, how I love watching you like this. God, how could I give you up, my lovely, lovely James.”

And I was crying again. He pulled out his fingers and yet again he kissed away my tears before pushing my knees up to my chest and then, slowly, so slowly, he entered me and it was bliss. I was his. He wasn’t going to leave me. He adjusted the angle of his thrusts and I couldn’t think, I could only feel. I knew he was making me make those little desperate noises he loved and I couldn’t help it and everything was spiralling away in such intense waves and all he had to do was tighten his hand around my cock and the moment of unbearable pressure as my balls tightened and then I was coming, spurting over his hand, my belly, and he was laughing, calling me beautiful again before he grabbed my hips and pulled me in, thrusting deeper and faster, until he too had come, deep in me. I cold feel each rhythmic pulse until he had emptied himself.

I opened my eyes. His deep blue ones looked at me so tenderly, before he got up, sliding out of me, and grabbing some tissues.

“All right pet?”

I nodded.

“I forgot how bloody marvellous that feels. I can’t give you what you want, James. I’m sorry. You want me to marry you. I’m too old to change who I am, how people see me. But if you let me, we could still do this, couldn’t we? Sometimes?”

I felt like a bucket of icy cold water had just been poured down my back. “What?” I demanded, sitting up. “What about Dr. Hobson?”

“What the eye doesn’t see...”

“What?”

“Come on love, you love how I make you feel.”

No. I don’t. You are making me feel broken hearted. Trash. Like a tart. A sex toy. “Get out Sir. Get out of my bloody home. Now!”

“C’mon love.”

“Don’t you fucking call me love! Get the fuck out of my home!”

“Can’t I have a shower first? I promised Laura I’d come round and stay the night.”

“Get out! Get out!” And I was pushing him. Shoving him. Slapping at him. Then punching him. Screaming at him. A real fucking embarrassing hissy fit.

And suddenly his experience as a beat officer, his extra weight, everything about him, came to the fore and he was restraining me, my arm twisted behind my back.

“Don’t you ever threaten me again, sergeant,” he hissed in my ear. Then he spun me and pushed me back onto the bed. “You just made this a lot easier. I felt so sick over the way I treated you, and yeah, maybe I’m a coward, but I’m not truly gay, but you, James love, have just shown me what a bloody unstable queer bitch you really are.”

He grabbed his clothes and shoes and stormed off to the bathroom. I banged on the door, apologizing, but it remained locked until he came out clean and dressed with wet hair. “Sorry I called you a bitch, James,” he said. I bit my lip to stop more tears. “I know I’ve blown it. I know I’m a coward, but I can’t do this to Mark and Lyn. Or the rest of me family. Come out, now? Have them all wondering if I ever loved Val, when she was the love of me life. I want another wife, one I can take to see me grandson and that.”

“Dr. Hobson won’t marry you. She doesn’t do commitment.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see. I know I’m not welcome back here, at any rate. Wouldn’t respect you if I was, the bastard I’ve been. I’m sorry James. Truly. And if you want to transfer immediately, fair enough, but it’s only weeks to me retirement anyway. Take some leave lad. I’m sorry. If it helps, I do actually love you, and even though you’re our Lyn’s age, thereabouts, if you were a girl I’d marry you.”

“This is the twenty first century, not the 1950s. You can marry me. And people have heard of bisexuality, you know.” I tried so hard to sound forceful, but I was so unhappy. I followed him to the living room where he picked up his phone and keys.

“Yeah. Well. I’m sorry for being such a shit. I want to hug you but that’s the wrong thing to do, right?”

I shook my head and clung to him, resting my head on his shoulder, crying. “I love you,” I said one last time.

If I had had the courage I’d have killed myself there and then. And I thought about it. I tried with the knife, but all I did was cut myself and cut myself as I had as a teen, after all the memories of Augustus came back to haunt me with a vengeance when I hit puberty and really understood what had happened to me in the Summerhouse. I was too scared to make that deep long incision to the artery. I even lay in a hot bath, I’d heard it made it less painful. But no. I cut and I drank and I cried. I fetched all the paracetamol, aspirin and cold and flu remedies and lined them up with a bottle of Scotch and tried to will myself to swallow it all down. But I couldn’t. 

And I couldn’t even, not in a million years, contemplate hanging myself. Not after that poor boy, not after that! I saw him in my dreams enough as it was. Besides, deep down, subconsciously, I was probably just being a drama queen, regressing as I was, the pain of my childhood as much as the heartbreak resurfacing and hurting. I probably, deep, deep down, wanting Him to find me and save me and come back to me.

I wasn’t in my right mind at all.

Eventually I must have passed out because I woke at dawn. Light was streaming in to the living room and I was on the floor. I sat up stiffly and limped awkwardly to the kettle and made myself tea, sugaring it, as if I had had a shock. I remembered and began to cry again. Pathetic.

 

~

Where am I? Have I slept? Can I sleep? I’m dead.

Dead.

How dreadful that sounds. Frightening. I spent hours longing for death, for the pain to end, but in the end my fear of hell won out and yet here I am. Dead. Still broken hearted. But not in hell. No angels or demons or family members to come welcome me to heaven or drag me down to hell. No face to face with my Creator being shown the record of my life. It’s all here, this ball of muddled light. I’m trying not to look too deep. There’s Augustus in there. And Mum. And Tom.

I didn’t lie to Robbie. All Tom and I went in for was a bit of frottage and mutual wanking. I was a bit scared of oral sex and he didn’t fancy giving me a blowjob, so he wouldn’t take one from me. Fair’s fair, he used to say in his best put on Cockney accent. He was from the East End, but his parents had been yuppie incomers. He loved to play up to the hard image he cultivated. So many girls fell for him. And me, I did too. In a mindless, teenage crush kind of way. I certainly didn’t feel as deeply in love with him as I do – did? – do! – Robbie Lewis.

I repented it all. After we split up, after he was rusticated. Then I really decided to take my half believed vocation seriously. Gay fling done. Boat race done. All there was left was to spend the following two years working hard on the degree and attach myself as much as possible to the Catholic chaplaincy. I gave up the rowing. Don’t know why. My confessor didn’t either. Sports are good for the sublimination of carnal desire. But so is manual work, and I did plenty of that, volunteering at a children’s home, running sports activities and doing the garden. Same in two old peoples homes – the gardens, that is, not the sporting activities! Shopping and gardening for elderly parishioners too.

It wasn’t just Tom I repented. Or teenage crushes on pop stars and actors and the natural wanking that went with just innocent boyhood fantasies. I repented Augustus. As if I were to blame in some way. As if I were to blame! Five or six when he started grooming me. I was so excited to learn the piano but I don’t think that makes me responsible for his interest in me. Or what went on besides piano lessons.

And no, Lewis wasn’t the first. He was. I was ten. Dad found out a year later. He went ballistic. And his lordship threatened him with the police. He wouldn’t give Dad a reference. Instead he helped with the scholarships. Dad started to drink then. Mum had been dead four years. I felt like I’d lost both of them. 

But even though I hadn’t told anyone, even though I what? - didn’t let him kill me like St. Maria Goretti took all those knife wounds to herself instead of his cock inside her. Well, I took his bloody cock, but is it my fault? He didn’t threaten me with a knife. He made me feel like he loved me, that this was what I needed to do to show gratitude. And then, as I grew older, old enough to understand the disgusting, filthy things he did to me, he threatened my father with unemployment, us with homelessness. He could easily call the police, plant things to make it so likely Dad was the thief he would be arrested. Easy to believe as a child, and years later, twenty years later, as a policeman, I can’t see uniform not believing a Marquis accusing his Estate Manager, especially if the stolen property was then recovered in the said Estate Manager’s cottage.

What had I to repent? I was a victim! Did Fr. Sanders say that to me? No. He absolved me of it all, as if it were all one, being abused as a child, boyhood crushes on male pop stars, wank fantasies about other men, a loving relationship with a boyfriend. Well, I say loving. I convinced myself I was in love with Tom, and he seemed to like me and fancy me but then he turned out to have had two girlfriends on the go. The one who had used him as a dealer inside our college and the one he got pregnant. Although, actually, I think he loved all three of us. At least he had the guts to tell me about it all. 

 

~

 

After the tea I stared at my neat line of over the counter drugs and booze, all ready for me to systematically swallow and take the slow, sleepy way to oblivion. And then God’s judgement. Suicide. A mortal sin.

I couldn’t do it.

I was scared of hell.

But I couldn’t live.

I couldn’t face the pain.

Bright fame. Light bearer. Robert Lewis. My redemption. He gave me space and respect. He let me be myself and only mocked in the kindest of loving tones. He undid the wounds of abuse and neglect and let me grow. He was my everything. And then he had turned into someone I didn’t recognize.

Or maybe I did. For all his grand, if albeit blunt Geordie, words, he hated himself deep down as much as I did. Or one half of himself, he being bisexual not gay. I could understand, maybe, after all. Perhaps something had been said to him that made him even question what he was doing with me? Made him panic? Hobson had never hidden her interest, so I suppose he felt she was there, waiting in the wings, so he could prove to himself he was straight. Normal. A real man.

He called me a bitch.

He’d never done that. He hated such phrases. Even though he had every right to, even though I always took, even though I was so much younger than him.

But he didn’t even mean it like that, did he? He had called me a bitch as one would a woman in a fight. He emasculated me to that extent.

Was that his age? Or how he saw me, deep down?

I began to cry again, curling up on the floor, pulling a cushion off the sofa and hugging it.

I think I slept again. I woke up cold and stiff. I stumbled up and dressed and made myself more sweet tea. I even made myself eat a biscuit. I looked outside and saw bright sunshine, fluffy clouds. I could hear tourists and students walk past. I went out.

I had some idea I might go rowing. Try to pull myself together. The sky. The river. The ducks. The willows. The beauty of God’s creation. Find some comfort, some reason, some meaning. It took me an hour to get to Donnington Bridge boathouse. And then I realised I was dressed entirely inappropriately in tight jeans and leather boots, not sweats and trainers.

I crossed the bridge and walked back the other way, through the Nature Reserve. I came up by the Head of the River and crossed the Isis there and intended to go into Christchurch Meadow. I’d now been out walking for about three hours. I probably needed to eat. I was desperate for some water. But I couldn’t face a pub or cafe, being with people more than I had to. As I got to the kissing gates I realised the man who had staggered from the beer garden had been following me.

“DS Hathaway!” he slurred. “James, isn’t it? You are a James, right, not a Jim?”

“Inspector Peterson?” He was unsteady on his feet, and stank like a brewery. And it was, only...? I didn’t know. I realised I’d not put on my watch, and worst, left my phone at home. Shit, I was on call this weekend. Helpful, the bells began to toll. It was two o’clock.

“Alan,” he said with false brightness, and put his hand to my shoulder. “It’s Alan, James. It is James?”

“It certainly is James Sir.”

“Alan!”

“Alan.”

“Fancy a pint James?”

“Um, Sir, I think you might have had enough. I will gladly go for a drink with you, Sir, but maybe we best get some lunch first, to soak up what you’ve already drunk. Are you all right Sir?”

“It’s Alan. And, no, I’m not. I’m cursed, James, cursed. Everywhere I bloody went. Couldn’t sleep, see. Got back so late, alone. I looked at their room and I could of wept, mate. Really. My ex can be such a selfish cow.”

“I’m sorry Sir... Alan.”

“Anyway, after crashing out I thought I’d go for a run,” I noticed he was wearing sweatpants and a rugby shirt, “but what happened was there they were, all lovely-dovey and holding hands on the river...”

“Who were?”

“The lovely Laura and that old git. What she ever sees in him, God knows...?”

“A lot!” I snapped before I could stop myself.

“Oh yeah. Sorry,” he put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Sorry lad. Right pair we make, eh. Mooning after them. But it got worse. I went to the Trout for a quiet pint and there they were soon after, all hand holding over their beers and gazing in their eyes. I felt sick. So I came down here and I’d been drowning my sorrows until in they walk so out I go and then I saw you...”

“They’re in there... The Head of the River?”

“Stay lad. It’ll only hurt.”

He was so drunk, his words so slurred. “You’re right Sir. Alan. Shall we get something to eat somewhere?”

“As long as it’s nowhere they’re gonna turn up at.”

We went to the Nosebag; popular with students and not somewhere I had never heard of Lewis or Hobson going to. I’d not been there for years, not since I was in the Seminary and used to take the coach to meet up with Will and Jonjo. Good, cheap food, fresh ingredients, all prepared while you wait. He had the chilli, I had jacket potato and cheese, which I prodded and poked at and pushed around my plate, a few mouthfuls may even have found their way in although swallowing was painful. I had tea – somehow, sugary tea was all I wanted in my heartbreak. I made sure he had a whole pot of strong black coffee. Eventually he asked if I was going to eat that and finished my lunch for me, then got up for pudding. He had cheesecake and brought me a slice of chocolate gateau and tried to encourage me to eat it. The food and coffee had done their work and he was more than halfway sober by the time we finished. 

“Thanks for all that James. I owe you one.”

“That’s quite all right Sir... Alan.”

“It’s not just Hobson and Lewis, though God, it has been hard these past few weeks. Hasn’t it?”

I looked down and pushed chocolate cake crumbs about my plate. My cheeks felt warm. Perhaps I was blushing. “Yes.”

“You don’t exactly hide your crush, do you? And I’ve even been out with her, but I think I might have been played to make him jealous. Bastard!”

“He isn’t...” Actually he is, and you don’t know the half of it Sir.

“I don’t want you to think I’ve been drinking like that every weekend since they’ve got together, James. I haven’t. I had this weekend off entirely off rota. My kids were coming to stay.”

“You have children?”

“Five all told. But my first two are by my first marriage – sixteen they are, Sam and Matty. Just done their GSCEs. Did well. Matty’s into science, he’s staying on to do ‘A’s. Sam’s all dramatical, she’s off to college to do performing arts. They’re in London. Come down when they like. We email and skype and text. Good relationship, me and the twins. Always came to stay in Gateshead every school holiday when they were little. 

“No, it’s my little three. Ex is always doing this. We meet half way, she drives down from Gateshead and I go up. Service station, we meet at. At three, so I always take Friday afternoon off when they are coming. But she didn’t show. Waited until nine o’clock, worried sick. Got on to one of my sergeants, just to check traffic, to see... At nine, I got the text. Bobbie’s got a bit of a fever. Probably a lie. Always something. Not the first time I’ve driven up like that only to be sat waiting for hours.”

“I’m sorry.” I don’t have children. My Dad and I are so distant. But I know, even though Mark is nearing thirty Robbie still hurts about the lack of contact, and he and Lyn talk on the phone most days. “How old are they?”

“Angie’s the oldest, she’s six.” He pulled out his wallet and showed me a picture; a girl with blonde bunches and a smile with her front teeth missing. The tooth fairy had been busy. A boy, smaller, and a baby, completed the photo. He took out his phone and then started scrolling through hundreds of them, on swings and slides and at zoos and parks and farms... “Bobbie’s eighteen months now, and Darren is four. He’s just started nursery full time.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“Miss them.” He seemed to pull himself together. “Okay, young man, I seem to remember offering you a pint. How about the Cricketers Arms, can’t see you know who going there. Come on, I owe you.”

I nodded. As I stood my sleeve rode up and I caught him looking at my arm.

“James lad. He’s not worth it.” He touched my arm, he sounded horrified.


	5. Chapter 5

I feel like I’m waking up. It’s not just like a blank, but like I’ve actually been asleep. Do ghosts or spirits or whatever I am, do they – we – sleep?

I seem to be curled up pressed against something. Oh. It’s a mortuary drawer. Is that where... I am? My body is? Hobson is sitting over in the corner, at a desk, typing. Only one small light from the laptop screen illuminated her face. Her phone rings.

“Oh Nikki. Thanks for calling back. I couldn’t talk to anyone around here, they’re all too involved. Besides, I want to keep Robbie’s secrets for him.”

She listens, they then talk about pathology and bodies for a while. She asks after this Nikki who appears to be another pathologist, an ex student of hers who is working in Manchester. Then Hobson says,

“I can’t believe how he treated him. I can’t. I’ve known Robbie for years, since he was a sergeant. And I can only say he has always been kind, non judgemental and a gentleman, an old fashioned gentleman. He’s clever, too. Everything I’ve respected about him seems to have vanished overnight. I’ve always fancied him, even when he was married, and as my friend it was heartbreaking to watch him fall apart after Val died. I thought that we could be good, together, you know? I know he’s old fashioned but I didn’t think he was so sexist and stuck in his ways like his old boss to not consider, you know? But why he changed his mind and asked me out, I don’t know. I thought it was as he said, he was over Val, but he must have already been over her. Oh Nikki. I liked James immensely. I would never have hurt him for the world...”

Oh Laura. I didn’t want to hurt you either. Have you seen on my body what they did to me, how they hurt me. Can you tell I didn’t jump?

Unless I did?

Like some medieval maiden who had been dishonoured? 

I have this horrible feeling that part of me is as stupid as that.

No!

I didn’t jump. I had climbed back off and to be clear with myself, they had cracked some ribs and punched me so much in the kidneys I think I might have been bleeding internally. I can’t see how I could have climbed back over the wall and the safety nets to jump in that state. But how can she tell what is due the fall and what is due to them hitting me, jumping on me, kicking me...?

But you saw all the different sex, loving consensual, drunken dubious consent and sexual assault and you catalogued them all. If you did that can you separate my injuries. Please, Laura, I know you can...

 

~

 

I can’t remember it yet. It’s too painful, too terrifying. I’d hardly eaten for two days, and was still probably so drunk. In fact, I’d been barely eating for weeks. I was so weak. Weak, drunk and tired. And emotional. After all, I’d been contemplating a jump of no return. Since I was too afraid to slash my wrists or take an overdose I was going to leap into the dark, into pain free silence. But then I realised it would be the eternal fire of Hell forever and climbed back.

They were laughing. They too were drunk. And stoned too. Eight of them.

No. I can’t face this.

 

~

 

There is a knock at the door and a young blonde woman walks in. Laura is surprised, to say the least.

“Kate! What the hell are doing here? Shouldn’t you be in Causton? Chasing some lab work?”

“Oh Auntie Laura, I wish I was. Can I come in?” A niece? No wonder she seemed so similar to Hobson, like a younger version out of the same mould. And a pathologist too, if I was understanding what I was hearing correctly, for Midsomer Constabulary. The highest murder count outside the main cities like London and Manchester in the whole country. Busy girl. What was she doing here? Of course, Causton was just down the road, so it was likely they might ask the John Radcliffe forensic path labs for assistance now and again.

“Sure. It’s good to see a friendly face. Oh Kate, give me a hug.”

“Um, sure.” It didn’t look like the Hobsons were usually a huggy type of family.

They hug and then Kate pulls away. “I’m so sorry Auntie Laura, but I’m here to check on your autopsy and conduct a second.”

“On James?”

“DS James Hathaway? Yes. I’m afraid the Oxfordshire Chief Constable has decided that this is too close to everyone in Oxford. A DCI from my patch has arrived to lead and he asked me – I’m so sorry Auntie, I know you won’t have missed anything, but you’ve been unable to rule so...”

“He was sexually assaulted before he died. He’s a Catholic. He’d not the type.”

“With respect Auntie, that is subjective.”

“Yes. I know. However, I’m waiting to run a few more tests and look at certain injuries again. A lot of the bruises, even some of the breaks, are not consistent with the fall. I think he may have been beaten very badly as well as orally raped. They may have ‘helped’ with the fall, either as he struggled to get away or even after they had finished with their physical and sexual assaults. He would have been very weak. He’d existed on a diet of mostly alcohol and sweet tea for at least 30 hours. I have to be sure. I can’t condemn him without checking. The very least I can do for the poor boy is make sure he gets a proper Catholic funeral and burial.”

“He meant a lot to you?”

“Oh, Kate...”

“Can I see the body?”

Hobson visibly pulls herself together, becoming very professional. “Of course Dr. Wilding.”

And now they are walking over here, to the body drawer, to... me.

My head is buzzing...

I’m back in the gents near to the mortuary. I can hear Himself still sobbing, as if I never left. I’ve gone backwards in time again, I think. Unless he’s been crying solidly for hours?

Oh Robbie...

I really don’t understand what is happening to me! I just seem to be moving backwards and forwards in time and location, a few hours back and forth and from the bottom of the Westgate to the John Radcliffe and then the station and back again. If it’s not me, is it when someone thinks of me? Or I when I think of them?

No, then I would just be stuck to Himself like glue.

Oh!

Okay.

I can see my reflection. In the mirrors above the basins.

And the big one opposite the door too.

I look bloody awful. The side of my head. Shit!

Okay. I have seen worse at crime scenes. But not me! So much blood. And stuff!

“Too many bloody brains, that’s you trouble James!” he used to tease. Huh! Well, Sir, I think I’ve left some of them under the Westgate car park now.

Do I have to spend – what, eternity? – looking so awful? I stare at myself in the basin mirror and as I do, the nasty bashed in injury is fading. But my hair and face are such a mess.

That’s better. Face and hair all perfectly groomed. A little quiff I think. A no, not blond eyelashes. We need to see how long they are. Much better. A permanent tint, I think.

I look down.

Oh. Will you look at my clothes? Ripped and torn and dirty, covered in stains and dust. My shirt is untucked and half the buttons are undone, some ripped off. My tie is loosened.

Now that’s much better.

I twirl in front of the full length mirror at the end of the bathroom. Now, I look good. Jsen Wintle grey suit, pink crisp cotton shirt and my dark pink silk tie he bought for my second birthday working for him. Plus of course...

My shoe! Where’s my shoe! I only have one shoe!

One lovely two tone Jimmi Choo and one dark pink soft wool sock!

Ah, that’s better. My Jimmi Choos. Part of my best birthday present of all time. He surprised me. Drove me to London on the Friday after work. Made sure we both weren’t on call. Took me to the Savoy. We made love on the king size bed and called room service for a very expensive meal. The next day he took me shopping, bought me my shoes, took me to a show – ‘Les Mis’ – then out for another expensive meal and back to the Savoy. Smoked salmon for our final breakfast.

There now. I’m looking like I planned when I decided to jump.

Except I didn’t.

I wasn’t in my right mind.

Oh Sir! Did you really mean to make me feel so cheap and used?

He regrets it now, crying in the cubicle.

Oh, Robbie...

He starts to subside in hiccupping little snorts and then finally stops. He comes out and goes to the basin and splashes lots of cold water on to his face. His eyes are red and swollen. He looks old. He still looks grey. His lips are a little blue too. Shit. He straightens up and looks into the mirror.

He sees me.

He can see me!

He spins around, but he can’t see me.

But he can see my reflection. I’m so pleased I sorted myself out.

“Ah, God, Robbie Lewis, you’re going crazy now!”

I smile at him. I can’t help it. I love him so much.

“Come on now, you heard Val in the next room for months, smelt her perfume near you for years. It’s the same. You’re bereaved man. Pull yourself together.”

No, I’m here! It’s me! I’m with you Sir! Please, I didn’t kill myself. I didn’t kill myself. I didn’t. I DIDN’T!!!

“Oh James lad. Pet. My love. I’m so sorry.”

Don’t be! I didn’t kill myself. Listen to me! Please listen to me!

He looks terrified now; he won’t look in the mirror now. He walks quickly to the door. I try to follow him but the door swings back into my face. Why can’t I walk through them like a proper ghost?

He’s gone. He thought he was hallucinating.

 

~

 

I have to wait ten minutes for Aberdeen Angus to come in for a pee. I bolt out of the door and run after Himself. I catch him in the car park. As he opens the door I slide inside and ease myself into the passenger seat. I make sure I can’t see my reflection in the wing mirror or anything.

His phone rings and buzzes and sighing he looks at it before he answers it. He’s already plugged it into the sound system so it’s on speaker.

“Ma’am. I’m sorry. I know that...” His voice is hoarse; it’s obvious he has been crying.

“Robbie,” Innocent says very gently. “I do need to talk to you, and as his DI alone you can’t possibly lead. In fact –” she pauses and takes a huge gulp of air – “we’re all too close to this. The Chief Constable has called in an outsider, from Midsomer Constabulary, to lead. You must give him every assistance. And before you speak to him I must speak to you. I’ve had information I need clarification on.”

“Damn Laura, she promised,” he mutters.

“Not Dr. Hobson,” she says curtly. “Where are you?”

“At the John Radcliffe.”

“Not attending the PM I hope?”

“I didn’t want to leave him, I... if you must know Ma’am, I’ve spent the last half hour crying in the bog like a bloody schoolgirl.”

“Oh Robbie. Look, as soon as you’re up to the drive you come and see me. and then you’re on leave. No argument.”

 

~

 

Stuck like glue. I follow him all the way to the Chief’s office. He’s brought tea by the secretary. She’s redone her face now, no sign of the earlier tears. Likewise Innocent. Ah, the wonders of make-up. Himself looks shit, but then he settled himself on cold water and scrubbing at his eyes with the back of his hands.

“Robbie. I’m won’t preamble. You will have be questioned in a while by the DCI from Causton.”

“Yeah. Fine. Of course.”

“But before that I want to know.”

“What Ma’am?”

“Did you and James have a sexual relationship?”

He reels a moment before he answers. “Yes, for about 18 months or so.”

“And you didn’t even finish it before you started your relationship with Hobson?”

“Well, I didn’t see him as well.”

“Was kissing Hobson in the bar your way of telling him it was over? That’s worse than doing it by text or email.”

“Thanks Ma’am. And yeah, I know. I wasn’t thinking. I was panicking.”

“About what?”

“Gossip. Not being straight. At how close we were getting. The thought of all the nasty talk and telling me kids and - ah, I don’t know what! He’s such hard work, my awkward sod. I think I assumed all kinds of crap, too, that gay men were just into sex. Stupid homophobic crap. People are people and James was a very moral person. He wanted marriage, I think. I know now he hoped that’s what he was getting when I retired, an end to the secrecy and a ring on his finger. I thought we were just mates having a fling. I’ve never done it before but it goes on all the time in the force, right? You shag your partner for a while, have an affair. Normally a heterosexual one, true, but...”

“Oh Robbie. Just your usual lack of communication then. Poor James.”

“I know. I was a complete bastard to him,”

“When did you last see him?”

“Friday night. And you may as well know, we made love. Laura’s found evidence of sex and she’ll send the semen off and the stuff, um, up his arse, is mine. Not the other stuff. I didn’t hurt him. I didn’t force him. Well, I broke his heart, didn’t I? But I didn’t rape him.”

“Thank you for being so honest.” Innocent then goes on, as if thinking aloud, “So it’s only the seminal fluid in the stomach unaccounted for.”

“What?” he growls. “Who fucked him with the condom? You know? There’s no bloody way forensics would have got back with the spit when they haven’t with the cum...”

“Calm down Robbie. It’s someone else here.”

“Gurdip then.”

“No.”

“Who?”

“Robbie, you know full well I can’t...”

“Who?” he stands, leaning over, almost threatening his commanding officer. She doesn’t put him in his place, which is so unlike her. She looks stunned.

“Peterson.”

 

~

 

“You fucking bastard!”

He’s stormed along the corridor and down the stairs to Peterson and is now pinning him to the wall. Officers are rushing to pull him off.

“You’re the fucking bastard Lewis!” he yells back, shoving back.

Lewis throws a punch, Peterson retaliates, they are yelling obscenities at each other as they are pulled apart by two burly uniformed officers.

“You hurt him,” Lewis finally says, calmer. “Laura says you made him bleed.”

Peterson hangs his head. “I never meant to.”

Innocent appears at the door, hands on her hips. “Enough. Home. Both of you. Stay home until you’re sent for to make your statement. Now gentlemen. Out!” She screams this last bit. Both men are released, and glaring at each other, they storm off, Lewis out and Peterson back into his office to fetch his jacket.

I’d say my legs felt shaky but I don’t really have them, do I? But they do, all the same, and I’m sitting on the floor on the outer office, shaking, as people move around me - and through me! - talking about what has happened, talking about me. They seem to think I might have loved having two men fight over me.

No, not really. It’s horrible.

No-one is surprised that I was Lewis’ ‘bitch’. They’re not surprised Peterson is bi. Someone says Peterson’s ex is a lesbian. An older officer mentions past gossip about Lewis and Morse. I’ve not really worked with anyone up here. No-one knows me. I’m just the pretty-boy sergeant ex-priest with a fondness for pretentious weird music to them who followed his inspector like a devoted puppy.

Fair assessment, maybe.

My head is buzzing again.

My body. I’m laid out in the chapel. The door opens. A youngish dark haired man I don’t know comes in, followed by...

Dad.

Oh Dad!

The sheet is folded back. He keeps Dad to the side that is not smashed in by concrete, gravity and velocity.

He looks a long time. He leans on his stick and looks and looks. He steps forward and brushes a stray curl back in place of my destroyed quiff. He stokes my face.

“Mr. Hathaway?” the officer, because he must be an officer, prompts.

“Yes, that’s my son, that’s my James. But you all knew that Sergeant Jones, didn’t you?”

“We have to do things formally Sir. I am so sorry for your loss.”

“I sort of lost my boy years ago, you know?” He strokes my hair again, my cheek, and then bends stiffly, full of arthritis, and kisses my cheek. “Sleep well, sweet prince. Sorry I so screwed it all up for you.”

Oh Dad.

He steps away and follows Detective Sergeant Jones out of the chapel.

Dad.

Daddy!


	6. Chapter 6

I sit by my broken body for a long time. Someone – Hobson, I expect – has closed my eyes and cleaned up the blood and stuff. By stuff I mean brains and bones and bits of pavement.

If I close my ‘eyes’ right now I can see the ground rushing up to me, feel the wind on my face, hear myself scream and plead and beg for forgiveness for any harm I ever did, any sin I ever committed. Yet I still love Robbie Lewis and don’t feel forgiven, just redeemed, as if it was never a sin.

Dad drank in his helplessness. I can see that now. Lost without Mum, and desperate to stop what Mortmaigne did. Taking the bribe of helping me in to the prep because it would give me such opportunity and take me away from Crevecoeur Hall. And when the scholarship was assured he searched for work that would take him without a reference. But by that time I was such a snob that Estate Manager had been embarrassing, but woodman, in a tiny, tiny two up, two down cottage, had been unbearable. I hated our drop in income; it hadn’t been big enough to start with as far as the teenaged me was concerned. He protected me and I sneered at him.

Thou Shalt Honour Thy Father and Mother.

Stuck up little prig, I was.

An orderly has come in, and is taking my body. I follow.

“Thing is Auntie,” Dr. Wilding is saying to Dr. Hobson, “I didn’t tell the Inspector we were related. I thought it best he didn’t know. He might have asked for someone else, and if you had to have someone question you and second-guess you, I thought it had better be me. I know you. I know that you would be as impartial as with anyone. Even if you have a motive for not wanting it to be suicide.”

“Because I’m in part to blame, you mean Kate?”

“No, Auntie, of course not...”

“Firstly, I didn’t know until after the PM that I was, in anyway, however indirectly, to blame for that poor boy’s distress. And secondly, if he jumped then the sexual assault would have affected the balance of his mind.”

“I see that Auntie. Besides, now we can separate more of the injuries, I’m of the mind he was probably thrown.”

The door is opened by DS Jones and he is followed in by a slightly older man, a big man, tall, broad, a bit plump maybe. He has a kind face and intelligent eyes. I like him immediately, I think.

“Dr. Hobson I presume? I’m John Barnaby. I understand you were Kate’s professor. I hope this is not too difficult for you. I mean no insult to your professional opinion or conduct in anyway, but we must follow procedure. If this isn’t suicide, and in any case, with the sexual assault, I want a conviction. We can’t give any defence any ammunition.”

“Of course Chief Inspector.”

“Do you mind if Dr. Wilding talks me through, Dr. Hobson?”

With a rather curt gesture, it seems to me, Hobson indicates for her niece to talk.

“DS James Hathaway, found at the bottom of the city centre’s multi story car park. Right side of head smashed in and several broken bones, including all the long bones in the arms and legs. However, we have broken and cracked ribs that appear to have happened an hour or so before death, rather than at the time of death. The mouth and oesophagus are bruised and there is evidence of forced oral sex. Early lab results have identified five distinct DNA profiles, but it is too early yet to get a full match on our records with any of them. His eyes were open and his contacts were in. Then there is all this...”

She pulls back the sheet. “This bruising again was prior to death. It’s come out post mortem. Here, these lines of marking, with these circular indents – hit with the edge of a skateboard, possibly? The grooves are in line with the edge of a plank, something of that kind, but then with these two circular patterns, it would indicate a skateboard.”

“It would indeed.”

Hobson rolls me on to my side. Wilding continues, “Bruises that will tally with shoe sole patterns, most likely match some kind of trainers. Also, one kidney had ruptured. He was bleeding internally for at least half an hour before he died. His blood pressure and core temperature would have been dropping. I doubt very much if he could have got himself on his feet, much less climb a high wall and some kind of safety fence.”

I knew it. I felt something – rupture? I had been feeling so cold. Shock and fear, I thought. Medical shock, obviously.

“There are nets, too,” Hobson adds. “Jumpers have to be very determined and able, these days.”

“So. Not suicide then,” Barnaby says thoughtfully.

“Unlikely,” agrees Dr. Wilding.

Thank you.

“But I understand you found a note, Dr. Hobson?”

She sighs. “It was addressed to Inspector Lewis.”

“So... what? He intended to jump but was murdered first?” asks Jones.

“Whatever his intentions were, this is still a murder, and a serious sexual assault,” Barnaby replies.

“I know James Hathaway. He may have contemplated it, but I’m sure his Catholic upbringing would have stopped him in the end.”

“I will be talking to you, later, Dr. Hobson, if I may?”

“Of course, of course.”

“Anything else Dr. Wilding? What about his arms here?” He points to my left arm. Did I really cut myself that much that night?

“His wrists have been restrained, but there is also earlier bruising to wrists and upper arms of finger bruising, that could just be related to intercourse, or someone grabbing him. The cuts and cigarette burns are self-inflicted – hours to weeks prior to death.”

“He was not a very happy young man.”

No. No I wasn’t.

“He’d also had anal sex with two men in the hours before death. Once with a condom, using little in the way of lubrication apart from saliva, five to ten hours before, that had caused tears and bleeding, and 24 to 30 hours before, with plenty of lubrication but no condom. Also the bit lip here that must have been quite deep happened again roughly 24-30 hours ago. Could be by him or his partner during intercourse, or it could be coincidental and indicative of his disturbed state of mind – you know, chewing his lip.”

“We are already aware of both those partners. I will be questioning both very soon. But I’m wondering on whether to wait for the DNA full profile from the stomach contents first.”

He thinks Robbie or Alan raped me and threw me off a car park?

No!!!

Absolutely not!

This is awful. In life I was the uptight ex-priest that they took stakes on whether I was still a virgin. Now in death I’m some kind of slutty helium legged bitch! This is horrible!

What did I think would happen if I’d jumped? There would still have been a PM and a search for the DNA to find motive. Or even just my letter. I could not have protected Lewis from the flak either way.

Oh Sir, I’m so sorry.

He’s asking Hobson something. “Did DS Hathaway bite his lip, as a habit, had you noticed Doctor?”

“No. He bit his nails down to the quick and the skin around them too. He smoked a lot. But I can’t say I’ve ever noticed him bite at his lip at all.”

“Right. Thank you very much doctors. If I have any further questions I’ll be in touch. You’ve both been very helpful. Come on Jones.”

Have they? Where are you going?

“Where are we going Sir?”

“The scene of the crime, Jones. Keep up.”

 

~

 

“They found the shoe here Sir.”

“It’s a long way from the edge.”

Yes, it is, right back up against the walls of the lift shafts and stairwell. Out of sight of any CCTV, although I know that there is hardly ever any film in the Westgate cameras. The security company likes to cut costs. Uniform bitch about it, comforting victims of car break-ins with suggestions of footage to trace the thief and then, of course, there is none.

A whole section of the top floor of the Westgate is marked off with yellow, blue and white incident tape. From the back of the stairs and lifts to the place where I fell.

Fell.

Was thrown.

“Blood was found here. And here. Further back the semen was found, and all over beer cans and cider 2 litre bottles, along with cigarette and reefer ends Sir,” Jones is saying.

“And his shoe. Came off in the struggle.”

Yes. Already badly beaten. On my back. Winded and in pain. Already afraid. When the eldest, the one obviously in charge, had sat on me, leering. He leaned over and licked my face, like a fucking animal.

“Tastes of fag!”

One of them demanded, “What the fuck?”

“Tastes of make-up. Don’t you, eh? Bumboy? Bitchfuck. Crying over your darling boyfriend, are we dahlin’?”

“Fuck the bitch!” yells the youngest, scaring, shocking and saddening me into tears. And they laugh and he then straddles my head and forces open my mouth and I kick out and my shoe must have come off and I try to hit and my hands are grabbed and

No

I can’t do this

I won’t remember I can’t remember I won’t I can’t I can’t I can’t....

 

~

 

“You know what this reminds me of Jones?”

“What Sir?”

“Something out of your experience, no doubt, in all your years of genteel upper class murder and pig poaching and hare coursing.”

“What Sir?”

“If DS Hathaway had been half his age and female, I’d be in no doubt.”

“What?”

“This looks like a line-up turned murderous.”

“In Oxford Sir?”

“Oxford has its fair share of rough estates and housing projects. There are as many NEETs as there are university students here Jones. Oxford has one of the highest homeless rates and highest child poverty rates in the country.”

“NEETs Sir?”

“Not in Employment, Education or Training Jones.”

“Ah. I see. The line-up would have been opportunistic though Sir.”

“Aren’t they all, even the ones where some poor girl is targeted? Look, cheap alcohol, weed, cigarettes, skateboards and bike tracks. Who comes up to the roof of a multi story car park in a large group of at least five males after it’s closed in the early hours of a Sunday morning but the bored, dispossessed youth?”

“If that’s the case, how are we going to find them Sir? And prove it?”

“We’ll hope to God one of them in is on the database already. After that, we get one of them to crack.”

“Sir. If you are right and we do find them, keeping them safe and alive while we question them might be a problem.”

“And keeping us alive might be hard if it turns out one of those Inspectors wanted him silenced.”

I hope he is joking!

“Have you ever had an affair Sir? With another officer?”

“No. I won’t ask you Jones.”

“Best not Sir.” Oh, I recognize that irony of hiding what you mean in plain sight.

They walk away, to the car.

They are right though.

No. I won’t remember this. I can’t.

I feel cold and shaky.

But I don’t have a body to get cold.

I get up and walk to the edge and look over. It’s a bloody long way down.

I don’t want to be here. I can’t. I won’t!

 

~

 

I’m at my desk. In our office. In the station. At work. There are cigarettes and chocolate in the drawer. The birthday card for Dad that will never get sent. A novel I was reading. My tiny pocket Bible. My rosary. A picture of Mum and Auntie at some family wedding. Silly, personal things. The kind of things I sometimes have to go through, wearing gloves and trying to divine motive from...

My monitor is switched off. But the clock above His desk says it’s now twenty past eleven. I think I’ve been dead about eight hours then. But with all this flipping backwards and forwards in time it’s hard to tell.

They know I didn’t kill myself. That has to be good. But Robbie has my letter, and he knows I wanted to, knows how much I hurt him, and knowing how I died instead of by my own hand in only going to make his guilt worse.

I was such a melodramatic, attention seeking drama queen to write that bloody letter. If they hadn’t found me I’d have driven home and shredded it. He’d have never known. I’d maybe listened to Innocent and if I passed the interview I might have replaced that Jones. And I’m getting to like Barnaby and his quiet, thoughtful way.

Or perhaps returned to academia? Or even the church?

No, I couldn’t do that.

I’ll never know now.

I just wish I knew what I was and why I have to do this. I want someone to tell me what is going on. I want someone to hold me. But how can I be held again? None of the hurt stops at death. I’m so alone.

And afraid.

 

~

The office is a hushed murmuring. I look out of the door to the outer office. People are filing in, CID, uniform, SOCO, tech, admin even. Cleaners and canteen staff even. It’s getting crowded. There are two white incident boards. I wander out and look.

Oh God.

It’s me.

Several pictures of me: my smashed body, from so many angles. And another photo too. It is a nice one. I’m in a dark suit, the Paul Smith, and a purple tie and white shirt. It must be before I had my hair cut to its current style and it is gelled upwards. I’m smiling a slightly drunken smile. Oh! It’s the Christmas party the year before last. It must be from Gurdip’s phone.

There are lists. Call came in to control at 0437hrs. Uniform found and identified body 0459hrs.

My name.

The phrases serious: sexual assault. Battery. Possible murder. Query?

Someone has put a jar with some wild flowers in front of the boards. Not standard practice. Another person has laid another flower, a rose, in front of that, and a third has put my rosary there.

Innocent walks in and the quiet chattering abruptly ends.

“Right. Thank you for gathering here. I appreciate that you have duties so I won’t keep you. I know we’re a bit pushed for space.

“Yes, as you can see from the incident board, DS James Hathaway was found dead in the early hours of the morning. Initial appearances suggested suicide and I know gossip and concern has been rife. However, the more we learn from the PM and scene of crime forensics the more we are becoming certain that his was a murder. 

“This is DCI John Barnaby from Causton CID in Midsomer Constabulary. I have asked him to lead as I feel we all – myself included – are too close to this. The Chief Constable and I have asked for a counsellor to come to the station for the rest of the week. She will be in interview room 4 from tomorrow morning and please, it is not a sign of weakness but strength if any of you choose to take advantage of her presence.

“You will have heard rumours of Hathaway’s involvement with two senior officers, which again is why we need outside investigation. Please give DCI Barnaby and his Sergeant, Benjamin Jones, every assistance. Thank you. If everyone not directly asked to be in this investigation could now return to work.”

People file out. Someone else has left another flower, a white lily, with the incident board, as they left. I didn’t see who it was. As Gurdip leaves he puts some Indian sweets with the flowers.

“Right. This is DCI Barnaby.” Innocent takes a step back and folds her arms.

“Hello everyone. Can I first please be allowed to offer my condolences? You all knew the victim well and I appreciate how painful and difficult this is for all of you. I’m afraid it may get harder and if any of you will struggle with professional detachment, I would rather you let me know about it. I will entirely understand.

“James Hathaway. Evidence and eyewitness accounts suggest he was disturbed and upset and possibly contemplating suicide, it may well have been why he was up on the top floor of the car park. Perhaps he would have jumped, or perhaps he changed his mind. There is still a small chance that the assault pushed him into jumping. But whether or not we are investigating a murder we are investigating a serious sexual assault, and – if it is murder or manslaughter – then the rapists are the murderers so we need to find Hathaway’s attackers.

“So. What do we know? He was on the roof. Unhappy, drunk and had not slept or eaten properly for days, even weeks. So he was not himself, so much more vulnerable to being assaulted and over-powered, despite being police trained in self-defence. He was beaten very badly, to the point ribs were cracked and broken and a kidney ruptured. If he had not been pushed or jumped he would have been dead within hours if he hadn’t had immediate medical attention. If he jumped then we get these bastards for attempted murder as well as rape, let’s be clear on this. He was orally raped at least five times, possibly more. So we know that he was beaten by at least five men.

“I say men, but the evidence of the cheap lager and cider, cigarettes and cannabis, coupled with evidence of push bikes, skateboards and roller blades being used by the assailants suggest youths to me. I don’t know this city. I need to rely on your knowledge of any gangs with previous whose know turf was the Westgate.”

“I’ll chase that down, Sir, if I may.” It’s Julie.

“Thank you. WPC...?”

“Lockhart Sir. Julie Lockhart.”

“Right. Thanks. DS Hathaway’s watch and phone were missing. Jones and I will be going to his flat after this, but we can assume for now that he was also mugged. A designer watch and a smart phone, in the hands of probably young men or boys with little income might arouse suspicion in some.”

“I’ll get on to it Sir.” It’s Hooper. “And Sir, I know DI Lewis is on leave, but he will be able to identify the watch and any other valuables the sarge may have had on him.”

“Thank you Constable Hooper, it had occurred to me. But thank you for the offer, I will furnish you with a full itemized list as soon as we have one.”

“I think he often wore a gold crucifix under his shirt.” It’s Gurdip. He shouldn’t be here, but he is, at the back, leaning on the wall. He speaks very quietly, but still everyone hears. It’s a small detail that was private and mostly unknown and yet it seems to be really recalling me in their minds.

“Was a necklace found Jones?”

“No jewellery, no watch, no work or personal phone. Wallet emptied of cash and credit and debit cards. No change in his pockets. Definitely robbed, Sir.”

“I’ve already tried to track the phones Sir,” Gurdip says. “Gurdip Sohal Sir. Tech. Both sim cards have been removed and both phones are switched off.”

“Thank you Sohal. Right. We need any CCTV in and near the car park looked into. 1100hrs Saturday to 0430 Sunday. Witnesses. There are the housing estates and student accommodation. Door to door. Let’s see if there are any witnesses. Likewise, people in the service industries – cafes, bars, pubs and so on. They may have parked in the Westgate in the section for employees and had their own key and have left after it was closed to the public. Let’s build up a clear a picture as we can of Hathaway’s last hours and the people in and out of the Westgate during his last hours.”

People murmur and start taking notes and indicate compliance.

“Oh. And one more thing. The fact is a gang of youths is the most likely theory to fit the facts, but I must point out two other lines of inquiry Jones and I will be pursuing. I mean no disrespect and I do not seriously counter it, but procedurally, I must. We have two men here with motive and possible opportunity.

“DI Alan Peterson.” Jones puts a picture of him on the board, next to the list of reasons to suggest a gang of youths. “Straight. Well liked. Not one to readily admit he is bisexual or want his subordinate officers to know of a one night stand with another man, especially a man who also doesn’t to one night stands and would want commitment.”

No. It wasn’t like that.

“DI Robbie Lewis.” Again Jones attaches a photo of Himself to the incident board as a connection, a possible suspect! “In a sexual relationship with Hathaway for the past 18 months or so. Wanting a fresh relationship with a woman and tried to finish with Hathaway then, apparently, changed his mind and wanted Hathaway as a ‘bit on the side’. Hathaway did not like that. It was what started his drinking and contemplation of suicide, maybe? Did Hathaway threaten to tell Dr. Hobson or even the Chief? Was he silenced?”

Everyone looks mutinous and starts muttering.

“I don’t like this any more than you do, but we must do everything by the book, for Hathaway’s sake, we can’t risk CPS or court throwing it out due to lack of due process or contamination of evidence. Lewis had motive and opportunity. But as I said, leave this aspect to Jones and myself. I don’t know him and thus can keep detached. Although I understand from my predecessor he is a fine detective and a honourable man so please understand me, I am doing this by the book, not through choice.

“Thank you.”

He goes into OUR office. Jones follows him. So do I. I’m not sure I like him so much now. Robbie Lewis – kill me! The sun is more likely to rise in the West!

“Well, that went well,” Jones says.

“No-one said this was going to be pleasant. Chief Superintendent Innocent wanted me to follow all leads and motives and be upfront with them.”

“I know Sir. What now?”

“Now, I think we’ll take a look at the poor young man’s flat. Then we’ll have in first this Peterson, and then the boss and lover, DI Lewis.”

“True Sir, about your ‘predecessor’?”

“Ah, cousin Tom. Yes, I called him a couple of hours ago. He did a few joint investigations with Lewis, both as a DS and a DI. Nothing but the uttermost respect for him.”

“And his judgement of character is second to none Sir,” Jones says with a fond smile.

“Such loyalty is commendable, Jones.”

“Tea Sir? Before we go?”

“That sounds like a very good idea Jones.”


	7. Chapter 7

I feel so stupidly embarrassed as I follow the DI and DS around my home. I don’t live like this I want to say. I’m not a slut. But it remains as it was after Robbie left me and worse than that. The supper is still on the table. I wrinkle my ‘nose’, imagining the smell of two days old meat pie remains. Coffee cups and wine glasses and my tumbler still half full of whisky next to the bottle and all the packets of prescription pain killers. A bloodied vegetable knife and a pile of tissues and antiseptic wipes. More tissues, tear stained and snot soaked, scattered on the floor. And I hadn’t even emptied the bath after I contemplated killing myself in there. The other knife, the carving knife, sits there on the side.

This is not me.

“This doesn’t feel right, Sir? From the rest of the flat, the neat order of the books and CDs and records I would say this flat is usually pristine.”

“My thoughts exactly Jones. He was obviously distressed. Contemplating suicide but perhaps not serious.” He picks up my Bible that I’d left on the sofa.

“Wanted to be dead to end the heart-break, then? He must have really loved him.”

I did. And death doesn’t even end the heartbreak. I think. I feel calmer. Not numb, but calm. And I can see Robbie was scared of changing, in the opinion and understanding of everyone who knew him, that is. I think the Robbie Lewis who loved me is the Robbie Lewis who loved Val. The Robbie Lewis who cheated on me, dumped me, used Hobson as a beard and told me I was just a bit on the side, his secret bitch to bang, that isn’t him. It’s like someone took him over. He was acting on fear, maybe? Self-hatred and fear?

Screwed up tissues. A bottle of lube. Stains on the sheet. Spunk. My spunk. Where he wiped his fingers after they’d been in me. The quilt on the floor. 

My bedroom looks so sordid.

Jones looks at my crucifix on the wall. Barnaby is picking up my prayer book.

“I think he very well went to the edge and changed his mind again,” Barnaby muses.

“Very likely Sir. Statistically, Catholics are unlikely to commit suicide.”

“Fear of hell? Yes, but he would already have that, wouldn’t he?”

“What, for being gay? Suppose so Sir.”

“Not such an unforgivable mortal sin as suicide, though.”

“Didn’t have you down as a Catholic, Sir.”

“I’m not. But the psychology of belief is a fascinating subject Jones.”

“If you say so Sir. No sign of either phone or watch, or this necklace the techie mentioned.”

Barnaby seems to be in thought. “M’m? No. There isn’t. Jones, I want you to go back to the station. I need you to get some files for me to read. Back cases of Hathaway.”

“Why?”

“DC Hooper...”

“Knew him back in Midsomer. He’s a good bloke Hooper.”

“Didn’t know he was one of ours.”

“Transferred when he made it into CID. Before your time Sir. Anyway, what did Hooper have to say?”

“I want you to look for the Black and Graham murders, winter 2010. And the Mortmaigne abuse case.”

“Heard of that.”

“Even in far away Brighton we had heard of that Jones. It was all over the media. A Marquis abusing kids on his Estate for over four decades. Of course it was.”

“Wasn’t he implicated in those murders?”

“One of his victims was, yes. Hooper told me that Hathaway grew up on that Estate.”

“Right. Black. Graham. Mortmaigne. 2010. Anything else?”

“Yes, the Phoenix Killer, 2008, plus the suicide of a Will McEwan, same time.”

“The possible trigger. Heard of that one too. Made our average serial murder look rational. Homophobia connections, weren’t there Sir?”

“And to Hathaway. He was the last intended victim. I want all that we can get from the files. I ideally want Hathaway’s file but I’ll have to approach Innocent directly for that.”

“Ooh, good luck Sir.”

“Are you still here Jones?”

“No. I’m going. How will you get back Sir?”

“It’s a small city. I’m going to walk to the crime scene again. I’ll see you back at the station in a couple of hours. Arrange for DI Peterson to be there at one thirty.”

“Sir.”

 

~

 

I stay. This is my home. Barnaby sits in my chair and stares out of the window. 

“You poor boy. Such a tragic end to such a short life. Did it give you any happiness, I wonder?”

He gets up and browses my books. “Such a clever young man. I understand you were applying for Jones’ job. It would have been my privilege to have you as my sergeant.”

He pulls out a book. Randomly. Stephan Knapp’s Comparison of Hinduism with Christianity. “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” It sounds like a quote. “Oh well, it wasn’t to be. Shame. Sarah would have invited every eligible gay and bisexual young man she knew until you were matched and hopefully happy.”

Who is Sarah? Did I want to be match-maked?

To work for an Inspector who accepted me, who read and quoted and had a wife? -girlfriend? – who would want to match make me?

I can’t imagine it.

Someone comes in with a key. I brighten, expecting Himself. Barnaby stands, alert. He takes out his warrant card.

“Sorry. I thought the police was finished. I was given the key by a young constable.”

“No. We’re done. Who are you?”

“Jonathon Hathaway. John.”

Dad.

Oh Dad.

“I thought I’d make a start, you know... sorting...”

“Cup of tea Mr. Hathaway?”

“Um. Yeah. Thanks.”

He looks lost. Like a lost little boy. He leans heavily on his walking stick. I can’t bear it. It looks wrong, my Dad, used to physical exercise all broken up by arthritis, standing in my flat, where he had never been. He doesn’t know where to look.

Oh my God.

The bedroom.

I can’t stay here.

 

~

 

I can’t walk through walls and doors yet, although people seem to walk through me and it tickles! And yet, now, as when on the Westgate, I can move if I’m determined enough. Just not control where I go. So far I’ve been to only my crime scene, work and home, or near my body. But now I’m at His place.

He is no longer in his suit, but jeans and a red sweater. It’s the cashmere one I bought him for Christmas. He’s curled up on his sofa, a big bag of fun sized Mars Bars and a bottle of brandy in front of him. Also a big jar of indigestion tablets. That’s new. And a bit weird. I catch my reflection in his coffee table. So does he, as he starts, shocked.

“Will you look at me? Dear God! Only imagination.” And he swigs from his brandy, straight from the bottle. Then chews an indigestion tablet. He’s rubbing at his left shoulder as if it hurts him. He’s still so pale and grey.

I sit on the sofa next to him. I curl up. I put my head on his lap. I can’t feel him though. It’s not the same.

“Oh James...”

Does he know I’m here?

No.

He just is saying my name.

He is crying again.

Oh Sir! I’m so sorry. So so sorry.

I love you.

I didn’t mean it. I didn’t.

My head is buzzing again. I’ve not had that for quite a while now.

What? We’re in an interview room. It’s now half past one. I’ve travelled in time again. This is really messing with my head. Mind. Spirit. Oh! Whatever I have. Am.

What am I?

Dead.

Barnaby and Jones are with Peterson, who is fidgeting with his phone in his hand, twisting and turning it over and over again.

“So, you spent most of the afternoon at this pub...?”

“The Cricketers Arms, yeah.”

“And how did Hathaway seem?”

“He got drunk fast. But I was already drunk, so...” Peterson shrugs. “Nervous. He seemed to be afraid I was going to take the piss, or worse.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, he’s gay. He likes weird music, classical stuff, world stuff. He plays in a band. He’s religious, used to be a priest, or almost. He’s sensitive. Can’t leave cases alone. Every murder, every suicide, every rape or assault, they all get to him, eat into him. If he makes a mistake and there’s another victim, he really lets it seep into his soul. Yeah. He’s too sensitive. And clever. Ex Cambridge boy, isn’t he?

“Not your usual copper, in other words,” Peterson drawls suddenly. “People do take the piss. Did take the piss. I expect he was expecting homophobia, but...”

“But?”

“But he realised he wasn’t going to get it from me. I was looking for someone who felt the same.”

“Why?”

“I love Laura Hobson. I have for a year now. She did go out with me a few times, even sleep with me a couple of times, but she made it plain she didn’t do commitment. Then suddenly she’s practically shacked up with Lewis, and they’re making a big song and dance of how ‘they’re together now!’ like they’re fucking fifteen! It was embarrassing.”

“And it hurt?” asks Barnaby.

“Well, yeah. And poor James. He finally told me that he and Lewis had been sleeping together for a year and a half and he had been in love with his boss for about five.”

“At the pub?”

“No, we went back for mine. For food. We stopped off and got a doner kebab.”

“What time was that?”

“Er? ’Bout seven maybe?”

“Then what?”

 

~

 

“You’re going to eat this, right?” Alan had slurred. “I ate your lunch. Think you need to soak up that booze too.”

The flat was tiny, furniture utilitarian. A few books and CDs. All the DVDs were for small children. There were lots of photos everywhere of his twins and his youngest three. He dumped the takeaway bag on the coffee table and the caught me looking. He probably recognized instantly that I was assessing, giving it the once over. One detective to another.

“Not got much. Most of my salary goes on my kids. Worth every penny though, don’t get me wrong.” He picked up a picture of the little ones. I remembered this was also why he was drinking. His ex had let him down over access.

“Can I use the toilet?”

“Through there.” He waved vaguely.

I walked past a bedroom with a bunk bed and a travel cot put up; everything looked very clean and tidy. Three little wrapped parcels sat on the chest of drawers along with a packet of toddler-sized nappies. I started to feel more than a little angry for him myself, I remember.

“Don’t want plates and stuff, do we?” he asked.

“Not with kebabs,” I answered.

“Could only find this in. Don’t tend to stock on the booze when the little ones are coming. More orange juice and pop.”

It was a cheap, generic supermarket lager. “It’s fine,” I said. More alcohol of any kind was very welcome; it blotted out the pain.

“Well, found this too. Left over from when my Gran came down at Christmas.” 

It was gin. “Now, that is better!” I said.

“I’ll get some glasses.”

He ate and watched me nibble. Swallowing was so painful and I just didn’t feel hungry at all. I forced myself I eat a few mouthfuls, but the pita was soggy, the chilli sauce tasted chemically, the salad had gone slimy and as for the greasy meat, it could have been horsemeat for all I knew. 

“Oh, come here, you’re so bloody fussy.” He grabbed the pita from me, our fingers accidentally brushing. I finished the lager instead and then poured myself a gin.

The food hadn’t really sobered him up much at all. He joined me in the gin. “I can’t fucking believe we saw them again. In the bloody Chinese next door.”

“Robbie likes Chinese,” I said stupidly. It had been a shock, seeing them get out of the car and go into the restaurant next door to the takeaway. I’d stared out of the window and I thought I saw Himself see me. I moved towards Alan and tipped my head flirtatiously as I said something to him. Look, see, I was saying. Alan didn’t notice, thank God. But he did notice Hobson is a pretty green dress and bolero cardigan. Not looking her usual self at all, but a much softer, feminine, fluffy kind of woman. Val-like, maybe?

“All bloody day!” Alan erupted in a loud drunken slur, dragging my mind back to his flat. “They’re down there, in the pub, right in my fucking face, all lovey-dovey and before that they’re all over each other on the river like fucking teenagers so I piss off somewhere else and it’s like they’re bloody following me, right in my face, at the next pub, all smiling and looking in each other’s bloody eyes like they’re taunting me! You know James; it was bloody hell, sheer hell. I’m so pleased I met you. You know what it’s like, don’tcha?” He was angry. It was the booze. Of course. He was angry at his ex-wife and he was angry at Lewis.

I must have been so pissed because suddenly I was angry too, at this man in his drunken wallowing. “You don’t know the fucking half of it!” I yelled. “I thought he was my boyfriend, I thought I was only secret until he retired. I go abroad for three fucking days and he’s all over her. Doesn’t even dump me. Instead he tells me we were never lovers, just ‘friends with benefits’ whatever the fuck that means?”

“Well, if you thought he was more then it means the bastard was using you for sex. The bastard. What a total dick.” Alan joined me in my anger, glad, I think, of any excuse to hate Robbie Lewis.

“Yeah, I know. And last night he comes round and tells me he wants me on the side. Her tells me he’s not even gay but he wants to keep banging me like I’m some kind of... some kind of... some kind of...” I tailed away. I didn’t want to cry in front of Alan.

“But you’re not though, are you? You’re clever. Sensitive. Why don’t you transfer James? Away from that shit. You’re worth more, you are.”

And then I was crying, great big gulping drunken tears. “I love him. I want to be near him. He wants to be just my friend and meet up when he’s retired and I thought I could cope with all that. But now, now I don’t understand anything.”

“You’re not a bloody slapper, James. Don’t let him treat you like a slag.” He was slurring his words so much through drink it was a struggle to follow. Or maybe I was struggling to follow because I was so drunk. I appreciated his kindness, though. He stumbled on, “I know fucking slags; my ex was shagging my sergeant and techie behind my fucking back. The bitch. You’re worth more. Much more.” He had moved closer, rubbing my shoulder, then back, and then had his arm around me. I looked up as he told me about his wife and suddenly we were kissing. I have no idea who made the first move. When I could process thoughts all I thought was that I’d not shaved and I was probably the first man he’d kissed.

Finally we parted, looking at each other. “James, at the risk of sounding like that bloody old Geordie bastard, I’m not gay. I’ve never, with a man, not ever...”

“It’s all right Sir. We’re drunk. We won’t mention it again.”

“Well,” he then said thoughtfully, “No-one is completely anything. My first wife, she left me for another woman.”

I stared stupidly. We were so drunk.

“Childhood sweethearts we were. Married young. But she’s gay. Completely gay. Yet we’re best mates even now and she says she did love me, for a long while.” He shrugs. Then he stroked my cheek, my hair, and then traced his fingers over the edge of my ear. “You’re cute. Pretty. Not handsome, your features are too soft, your nose turns up in such a sweet way.”

Does it, I thought. My ears stick out too much, I also thought.

He kissed my nose to prove a point.

“You know, maybe we should just make them jealous? What do you think?” he said.

Or maybe I said it?

I don’t know.

We were drunk and suddenly we were in his bedroom, undressing. He found a pack of condoms. “These okay James?” he asked, waving them in front of me as I sat on the bed undoing my boots.

“Um. I suppose.” I replied uncertainly. Robbie never wore condoms. How did I know?

He put the pack down and sat down next to me, pressing our thighs together. He put an arm around my shoulders. “Thing is James. I like you. I want to do this. But I’ve never been with a man. The thought of touching another man’s dick is a bit... unnerving. But if I fuck you I can make you come, can’t I? Can I fuck you? Do you want me to?”

I was so bloody drunk. I smiled and reached up to his head and pulled him down on me, kissing him. I had one boot off, one on, my jeans were around my knees and my t-shirt off. He still had his sweatpants on. We must have made an unattractive, drunken sight. “It’s’okay,” I murmured into his mouth, “S’okay. I like it. You can have me. Easy.”

For a while we just kissed and caressed, I kissed his neck, he bit mine, and then he began to rock against me, thrusting hard into me, his cock to mine. That obviously gave him pause for thought.

He sat up. “James, I’ve never, before...”

“I’ll show you. Promise.” I took the opportunity at undressing completely. So did he, and then he pulled back the duvet.

We climbed into the bed and I took out a condom and rolled it down onto his cock before he could lose his hard-on. He was looking at mine uncertainly. I grabbed a pillow and rolled over onto my belly, putting the pillow under me. I spread his legs for him.

“James. Are you sure?”

I smiled at him over my shoulder. “Sure. Absolutely.” Fuck you Robert Lewis, I was thinking more than anything.

He lay between my legs and I could feel his cock. Weird, I remember thinking, the difference in texture, the feel of the condom. He pushed into me but of course he couldn’t enter.

“James,” he said uncertainly, kissing the back of my neck.

“S’okay. Get off me.”

Once he did, I knelt up and spat on my hand, and, reaching around myself, began to open myself up with my spit and fingers. He knelt behind me and I tried to reach for his cock, guiding it, but he was way ahead of me. With the spit, the lubricated condom and me shoving back against him hard he entered me. I yelled with the shock. Robbie always entered me so slowly.

But in my drunken determination we were going to do this. I thrust back at him until he got the idea and began to fuck me.

“Sir!” I murmured at one point.

And then he was kneeling up, taking me with him. He held me, stroked my belly and chest, kissed the back of my neck as I let my head tip back onto his shoulder. Then his hand slid down. For a man who had been unable to even look at my cock, he had certainly changed his mind.

“It’s Alan,” he whispered in my ear. “I am not into any dom crap, whatever he was into.” Then he kissed me again.

He fucked me slowly and gently, his hand on my cock, fisting me at the same rhythm until I came. 

I let out another quiet, broken, breathy Sir as I did so, but he let that one pass. Instead he pushed me back down, bending me over and grabbing my hips in his hands and began to fuck fast and furious until he came with a shout.

As he pulled out of me he said, shocked, “James! God! I’m sorry. I’ve made you bleed. Shit, I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

“A lot?” I asked.

“No, don’t be daft. If it was that bad I’d already be tipping you forward and dialling 999.”

“Pity,” I said sadly.

 

~

 

“He said ‘pity’, so wistfully, like he was longing for death,” Peterson tells Barnaby and Jones.

“He may have felt suicidal, but it wasn’t suicide, Inspector, let’s be clear on that.”

“It wasn’t? It really wasn’t? Thank God for that, at least.”

“Why? Because you’re off the hook?” Jones demands.

“No. The man’s family. His religion. He can have a proper Catholic funeral.”

 

~ 

 

“James...” he said, horrified. And again, five minutes later, when we were cleaned up and drinking more gin in his bed. He opened a window and let me smoke, giving me an old jam jar lid to use as an ashtray.

“What?”

“Are you okay? I didn’t... really hurt you?”

“I’m fine.” I wasn’t, but it wasn’t my arse that was hurting, but still my heart. My chest heaved and my stomach churned with the misery of it all. Then I realised my stomach was really churning and I ran to the bathroom and brought up the bloody gin and kebab.

I went back to the bedroom and looked at him, really looked at him. He wasn’t bad looking and he had really tried to be kind and to understand. But he wasn’t Robert Lewis. He wasn’t my Robbie.

I felt sick with the guilt and misery. I felt cheap and heartbroken. I wanted Robbie back. I wanted things to be the way there were before I’d gone to Kosovo.

Failing that, I wanted it all to stop. All the pain, like a stone in my chest on top of my heart. My stomach heaved constantly, my guts churned. I felt heavy and lethargic. I wished I were dead.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hathaway remembers his assault and murder here so please take note of ALL the trigger warning tags here.

“He was so sick,” Peterson was saying. “Mind you, we’d both had so much to drink it wasn’t at all surprising. But he was so upset. He wouldn’t get back into bed. He was all for leaving, there and then. But he was so drunk; he fell over pulling his pants up. It’d been funny is he wasn’t so racked with guilt over what we’d done.”

“Did he leave then? What did you do?” Barnaby asks.

Peterson still turns his phone over and over in his hands. “I made him sit down on the bed. Told him to calm down. Got dressed myself, fetched him a glass of water and gave him some space.”

“Do you think he regretted the sex or was feeling guilty due to his faith, or attachment to his boss?” Jones asks.

“I think all three,” Alan replies, sadly.

“And did you?” Barnaby demands. “You seemed to think he was keener than you initially. I’m sorry to ask so bluntly, but among other things the Chief has asked me to make sure there has been no abuse of privilege as a superior officer.”

“Definitely not that!” Alan buts in. “Well, certainly nothing untoward from me. I don’t like what I heard from James about his relationship from Lewis. It’s not my place to judge, or instigate an investigation, but it sounded like Lewis might have used the boy’s crush and triggered childhood groomed behaviour to get what he wanted. But I wasn’t there. I didn’t even know about the relationship until James told me last night.” 

Absolutely it was nothing like that!

Was it

He’s just scared about coming out. Or something.

I love him! And he loved me.

Didn’t he?

Alan shrugs. “Did I regret it? I don’t know. I don’t think so really.”

“Then what happened?

“After a while, we both dressed properly and I made us a brew and phoned a taxi for him. We went back to the living room and sat on the sofa and talked... Well, I mostly talked. He smoked and drank his tea, keeping his eyes averted. I asked him out.”

“You asked him out?” Barnaby seems a bit surprised by this.

“Well, yeah. I did tell you. I’m not really into one-night stands. But he certainly wasn’t. I wanted him to feel less... used.”

“Used? But from you have told us, he wanted the sex. He was doing all the running, as it were.”

“And he’d obviously instantly regretted it. I tried, anyway. I asked if we could get together as work colleagues, as friends, or go on a date. Whatever he felt comfortable with, however he wanted to play it, really. But all he wanted was Robbie bloody Lewis.”

“He said that?”

“Yeah. About all he did really. He didn’t say much at all, apart from to apologize and then say he had decided to take Lewis up on his offer.”

“Which was?”

“To be a bit on the side, extra to Laura. I pointed out how bloody unfair that was to Laura and he just said in this small, pathetic voice, ‘yeah, but I love him. I can’t live without him’. It made me get bloody mad!”

“What do you mean?”

“I told him to pull himself together. To take a long hard look at himself – get counselling if he had to. I gave him as week, or after that I would be telling Chief Superintendent Innocent that he had been self-harming.”

“Ah, yes. The self-harm,” Barnaby muses, as Jones says,

“Bit harsh. Tough love or what?”

“But you didn’t threaten to tell Dr. Hobson?”

“How could I? It would hurt her, and hurt James too. I think James was hurting enough, poor lad, and Laura doesn’t deserve that kind of dent in your confidence. I had no idea what to do, to be honest. I had no idea. I’m kicking myself. I should have gone after him, or made him stay the night until he’d sobered up. I should have realised... all those cuts and burns...”

“There were many?”

“You’ve seen the body, haven’t you?”

“I want to ascertain how many were self-inflicted and how many, if any, were caused by the assault.”

“Cuts hours old and a few scars days to weeks old, but not that many – about five or six. The fresh cuts were too numerous to count on his left wrist and arm, and a few fresh cuts on his right as well. About three to four fresh cuts on each upper thigh, plus several cigarette burns on the inside of his left arm and on both thighs.

“Sounds like they were all self-inflicted,” Barnaby says.

They were.

“Thank you Inspector,” he goes on. “What happened after you tried to push him into getting some help?”

“He was silent. Told me I didn’t understand and little else. Said he’d wait outside for the taxi, which he did.”

“What time did it come?”

“Around nine? Just before I think.”

“Did you hear from him again?”

“No.”

“And what did you do after he left?”

“I changed the sheets, had a shower and went to bed. I must have been asleep by ten.”

“Are you sure?”

“Look, I was blind drunk, shagged out and hadn’t slept the night before! I didn’t stir until Innocent phoned me at half past six in the morning!

“Look, I know what this is. James did not phone me from the Westgate in trouble or threatening to jump! I certainly didn’t go there and throw him off! Why would I? I would have dated him, and unlike Lewis, I’d have faced all the gossip and back-biting and not hidden a thing. I’d have been proud to call him my boyfriend, even if I’d never even considered myself bisexual up to that night! Okay? I wish he’d have called me, or better, control or even 999, got himself some back-up! I wish to God...”

“It’s all right. Thank you DI Peterson. Jones, do you think you could get a glass of water for the Inspector? And switch off that thing. Interview terminated at... 2.46 pm.”

Jones leaves. 

“I am sorry Peterson. I have to follow all possible motives. I don’t want anything undermined or criticized by a defence lawyer or not give the CPS the right ammunition.”

“Sure. I do understand. Just as long as you understand I in no way abused my position as a senior officer with James.”

Of course you didn’t Alan. I was the drunken slut.

Barnaby nods. “I seem certain it was just one of those embarrassing drunken encounters that possibly could happen to any of us.”

“Well, thank you for being so understanding. You just catch those bastards and throw the book at them.”

“I intend to.”

Good.

 

~

 

I follow Barnaby as he leaves poor Peterson to compose himself. Poor, poor Peterson. Nothing he could have said or done would have changed anything. I was beyond reason. I was out of my mind.

Truly.

I. Was. Out. Of. My. Mind!

I mean it. I had not been in my right mind at all. My self-disgust at the casual shag with a straight man on top of all the heartache and reject unwound something deep inside myself. I felt lost and alone and unworthy, trapped in an ever-downward spiral of despair and self-loathing.

I was disgusting. Sinful. I wasn’t even worth of God’s Grace in any way.

Might as well end it now.

Once home I sat on my sofa. I think I hugged myself tightly and rocked, like a disturbed child.

Like an abused, neglected child.

Which I was.

Deep down.

I stared at all the booze and pills, the knife.

And then I knew.

Except, I don’t remember thinking very clearly, certainly not making any decisions or plans. I moved numbly, like an automaton on a pre-programmed course.

I shaved. I smoothed on moisturizer, then cologne. I fixed my face and hair. I dressed elegantly and put on my Jimmi Choos. I wrote the letter to Robbie Lewis. I don’t even know what it says now. Then I drove to the Westgate.

It was locked. I broke in and climbed the stairs, leaving my car parked in Paradise Street. I wonder if uniform or traffic have found it?

I think it was about eleven o’clock, just gone, by the time I’d climbed over safety barriers and walls and wire netting. I sat, perched high on one of the ugliest of buildings in Oxford, or anywhere really. The spires and towers of the university, the rivers and building and the whole dark, pinprick lit city lay spread out beneath me.

Slowly and painfully I came to my senses.

What was I doing?

I began to think of all the pain Robbie would feel, when he had already lost so many whom he loved: Val, Morse, his parents. I thought of my poor booze-soaked Dad, being told of my suicide by uniform. I thought of Dr. Hobson and Gurdip and the band and Fr. Roberts. I thought of all the old ladies and children at church who seem to dote on me.

I thought of Hell. 

I though of God. Of Our Lord. Of the Bible and the Church.

I thought of Our Holy Mother, of all the anguish and pain as she watched her Beloved Son, Our Lord and Saviour, crucified. If she could bear that, I can bear this, I told myself.

I thought of Our Lord, bearing the sins of the world, in His agony. He bore my sin. He walks in my suffering, sharing it...

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Stiff, exhausted and weeping, not now in heartbreak or anguish or self-pity, but for the love of God, I climbed back onto the top floor of the car park.

They were there.

Eight of them.

Two circled me, on bikes. One taunted me, then the others joined in. Then the one on the skateboard crashed deliberately into me and in my drunk and exhausted state I toppled backwards as he shoved, hard. Another kicked me as I fell.

The homophobic insults and taunting began in earnest. I was kicked. Hit. Jumped on. Rammed with the bikes and battered with the skateboard. Then the one on rollarblades jumped on my back and the world went very fuzzy and strange. Something had burst. I felt wet inside. It’s all I can say. Oozing wetness inside my body.

And then the pain really began.

The pain! It was unbearable, a tangible, real physical pain like nothing I had ever felt. Being shot is the only thing that came even close.

At first I had tried to punch, to kick to defend myself. I had tried to assert my authority with a calm, firm voice, the kind of words and tone they teach you to use at Hendon.

Then I tried to get to my phone. They took my phone. Phones. Both of them. My personal Nokia and the work Blackberry. My watch. My wallet. My change. My cigarettes and lighter. They ripped my shirt open and took the gold crucifix Dad had given me on leaving the Seminary – to still remember, in what path I chose, he had said.

They found my warrant card.

Some panicked but the ringleader turned it to more hate. They kicked me some more. Called me filth and pig. Laughed a lot more in their stoned, drunken, childish way.

They hadn’t a clue what they were really doing, the consequences. I wonder what they think now? Do they feel guilty? Do they even remember?

One found the letter and read it aloud in stumbling words. Illiterate idiots, they found it so funny...

The ring leader straddled me, licked my face, forced his cock in my mouth...

The others cheered him on.

After it was done, they dragged me to my knees, and across to the wall of the stairwell and lift shaft, propping me up, on my knees...

They took turns.

Every one of them, that is, who was physically old enough to.

You see, this is the saddest thing of all. The oldest was fifteen or sixteen, no more than seventeen. The youngest was ten at the most.

I’m so ashamed of myself. I was so afraid, after the first time, lying on my back, gagging, choking, fighting to breathe, unable to stop it...

I’m so wicked and unclean. The other four, I let them do it. I didn’t struggle, I even helped...

I wanted to breathe.

I wanted to LIVE!!!

Afterwards they got bored, and left me lying on the ground, panting, struggling to breathe, to even focus on anything, the wet seeping inside growing worse, while they smoked more skunk and opened another bottle of cider.

Then they panicked.

I was a pig, after all, not just a suicidal faggot.

So they hatched a plan. The letter went back into the envelope – if only I had sealed it! – and into my jacket pocket. Empty wallet and warrant card were returned.

It took six of them to throw me off the Westgate.

 

~

 

“Sir!” Jones is saying as he replaces my desk phone as Barnaby comes into our office.

“Yes Jones?”

“It’s DC Hooper. He thinks he’s traced the phones. Uniform are bringing in a couple of young lads found trying to flog them at a local car boot sale. Apparently the organizer and a couple of people they approached flagged it but it didn’t get enough points for a response until Hooper spotted it.”

“Good. It’s a start. We can question these boys.”

Well done Hooper!

I hope.

 

~

 

You know those dreams you have? Dreams where you are falling and falling and

Falling and

falling...

And then you wake up!

It was just like that.

I woke up.

I woke up next to a body.

I sat up, afraid, and looked at the body.

It was me.

Okay, so I was terrified. I tried to climb back in, but I couldn’t. I bounced off myself as if my body were protected by a bubble of energy. A force field.

I sat back down and hugged myself and looked at my empty body, at how broken and smashed and bleeding it was.

I was never getting back in.

I was dead.

Be careful what you wish for.

 

~

 

Barnaby sits down at His desk. “Tell Hooper good work.”

Jones won’t use my desk, I notice, not unless he has to, as in answer the phone or search the PNC. He hovers by the door, or perches on Lewis’ desk that Barnaby has appropriated for himself.

On the way here Barnaby had called Julie away from trawling through the PNC for gangs with previous of assault and rape and sends her to fetch DI Lewis.

Now he snaps at Jones, “Chase the forensics, will you Jones? Tell them I know it’s a Sunday and it’s only been eight hours, but I need those DNA profiles!”

A print out of all Julie’s possibles from the PNC is in his hand. I look over his shoulder. Two arrestees, let off on a technicality, for a line-up with a thirteen year old girl. The same two, with two more, various ASBOs for vandalism. Three have social workers. Parents had been prosecuted several times over school non-attendance. One is in foster care. They call their gang the Oxpen Westie Dozen.

They can’t count.

There are eight of them.

 

~

 

I wasn’t there long before a man with a pushcart with Oxford City Council logos arrived. He looked at my body, fought with nausea and then muttered, “Not another bloody one!" before taking out his phone.

The young uniformed officer arrived only a few minutes later, or at least it seemed so to me, but my relationship with Time, I now realise, has altered somewhat. He had only been around the corner, he explained, before asking the street cleaner to wait, in case CID wished to question him. He spoke into his radio as he approached me.

“423, in attendance of the body in Westgate now. Can confirm a body. Possibly a suicide but...”

Then he really looked at the body. At my body.

“Will dispatch pathologist and SOCO. Copy 423.”

“Oh shit. Shitbuggerfuck! Shit shit shit!”

“423? Copy? Do you require assistance?”

“It’s DS Hathaway.”

“423? Repeat please?”

“It’s James Hathaway. It’s Lewis’ bagman. It’s Hathaway. We have a man down. Repeat. We have a man down.”

“Okay 423. Calm down. Have despatched scene of crime and pathologist now. Will send for CID now, won’t wait for pathologist and SOCO to call. Or is it suicide? 423? Trevor? Trev?”

“Um. Yeah. We have a man down. Don’t know. Clothes disturbed. One shoe missing. Eyes are open. Oh shit, his head is all mashed in. I only saw him in the canteen Wednesday...”

“Assistance and back-up on route. Oh shit.”

“Uh?”

“It’s DI Lewis. He’s on call tonight.”

“He’ll not want anyone else here.”

“No.”

I didn’t even know the officer, and yet he recognized me and is upset by my body. He doesn’t even want to contemplate my suicide. But the murder of an officer is a disturbing thing indeed.

The street cleaner took him by the arm and pulled him away from me.

“Sit here mate. I got some tea in a flask I was saving for my break. Here, you drink this Constable. One of your lot, is he, then?”

“In love with his boss, everyone laughed about it. Now look at him. He’s got himself a woman. His boss I mean.”

Oh, he does think it’s suicide.

“Poor bastard. Think he jumped then? Thought you lot were pretty stable people.”

“We’re just people,” the PC replied sadly.


	9. Chapter 9

Jones has just answered the phone on my desk and given his guv a ‘look’ and now they are leaving. Desperate not to have any doors blocking my way again I follow. We go down to the interview rooms where I see Julie carrying a mug. She takes it to room 4, which is where all three of us arrive moments later.

Himself.

He’s back in a work suit. He looks shit though. No other words for it.

“Ta Julia,” he is saying, cradling the mug with his right hand. His left is bunched up into a fist, held against his chest. He is greyer, if anything.

“Inspector Lewis. I’m Chief Inspector Barnaby of Causton CID, Midsomer Constabulary. This is DS Jones. WPC Lockhart you know. Interview commenced at... 1647 hours.

“Do you understand why we have to do things formally DI Lewis?”

“I’ve a fair idea. Aye.” His voice is uncharacteristically hoarse, as if he’s in pain. Or been crying too much.

“Firstly, I do need to see the letter.”

He sighs and puts down his tea before putting his hand into his jacket pocket to retrieve it. It’s a lot more crumbled that when it was put into my jacket pocket. He slides it across the table.

Barnaby picks it up, removes my letter from its envelope and reads it briefly before handing it to Julie.

“Photocopy please, Lockhart. We’ll return you the original. I appreciate it means a lot to you.”

“Thanks.”

“Although personally I would say re-reading it over and over is not helpful to you. The pathologist has ruled murder by person or persons unknown. Whatever his intention, Lewis, he did not jump.”

“Aye.” He sighs deeply. “I’d say it was a relief but he wanted to, didn’t he?”

“He may have changed his mind. It appears from his flat he’d already considered and rejected various other methods.”

“Had he?”

“I’d even say he wanted to be found. Or just stop the pain. I doubt he was serious, but you know him far better than us, don’t you?” Jones added. Lewis looks stricken with guilt. A small part of me actually gloats. Maybe I’m still not quite in my right mind? Barnaby scowls at his sergeant before he demands of Lewis,

“When did you last see him?”

“At about ten thirty, maybe eleven, Friday night.”

“Where was that?”

“At his flat.”

“That’s when you left?"

“Yes.” Barnaby opens his mouth but Lewis interrupts, “And before you ask, we made love. You’ll have the pathology report soon and you’ll see my DNA inside him.”

“Was it for the first time?”

“No. We’ve been sleeping together for... what? Eighteen, maybe twenty months?”

“But you had finished with him?”

“Not exactly... I’d sort of started seeing Dr. Hobson but...”

“So you were using Dr. Hobson as a shield, a cover, as it were, to hide your gay relationship?”

“No! Yes... I don’t know! I like Laura. I thought me and James were...hell! I don’t know. There was this case, a while back. A suspect knew a colleague of mine, and during several interviews I had with him he bated me with... stuff.”

“What stuff”

“Homophobic stuff. Subtly. Implying I wasn’t a real man any more. Maybe I decided enough was enough. I don’t know. If I could go back in time...

“Look! I told James it was over then I... I shagged him, all right? Told him I would never live with him, but I’d keep him for... Oh God! Listen to what a bastard I’ve become. This really isn’t me.

“I loved him. I love him! I didn’t mean to harm him.”

Oh Sir...

I love you too.

“You want to know it there was an abuse of privilege, don’t you?

“I don’t know. Maybe? It didn’t feel like that.

“Or maybe it did? He was always there, by my side, schoolgirl crush, big needy, hero-worshipping eyes and eager to please – perfect tea and coffee, stay up all night sifting evidence without being asked, making sure I went to the dentist and whatnot, sorting out presents for me daughter and grandson. Perfect DS and PA and devoted puppy dog all rolled into one. Laughs – laughed at me jokes like no-one except my Val...”

“This is your deceased wife?”

“Yeah. You’ve only seen him dead. You don’t know how bloody gorgeous he was. Looked. Smelt. Felt. So tall and skinny in his smart designer suits, could have been a model. Lovely, he was.”

As he speaks he’s getting greyer and greyer as I watch, listening to him describe me, his feelings for me. It feels weird to me to finally know. He bloody well fancied me for someone ‘not gay or bi’. 

But now his lips go blue, or bluer, his left arm pressing more firmly to his chest. 

“I’m nearly thirty years older than him and his senior officer. He’s so old in his head but such a little naive, trusting boy in other things. I knew about the abuse that happened when he was a kid, but I didn’t know ’til Friday night I was the first man he’d ever, you know...”

And now he breaks of, completely breathless, his right hand pressing to his left arm.

“Are you all right Sir?” Jones asks.

“Yeah. It’s just bloody indigestion,” he manages to get out in a painful gasp before he kind of topples sideways and falls to the floor.

Jones and Barnaby react immediately – Jones getting him into the recovery position while Barnaby checks for a pulse on his neck. Barnaby shakes his head and suddenly they stretch him out. Jones is performing CPR while Barnaby smashes a fist on the alarm and rushes to the corridor and yelling that they have a man down and need the medic and an ambulance...

I can’t see him. Or feel him. He’s still in his body, if my limited experience is anything to go by. But I still start to shout at him.

No Sir! You can’t die! You hang on in there! I miss you but Lyn needs you! Your grandson needs you! You hear me Sir! Robbie! Don’t do this to Mark, Lyn and the little one! Live Sir! Live for Lyn!

Jones checks for a pulse again and sighs with relief.

He opens his eyes and looks right at me. “James?” he says. “Is that you lad?” And then he passes out.

 

~

 

I so want to stay with him, but I haven’t yet mastered this walking through walls and doors thing that ghosts and spirits and other things always do in all the fiction I’ve read – and believe me, I’ve read a lot of that kind of fiction!

Also, there are so many people, and they keep walking through me, I can’t really see what is going on. It also is hurting, all these people, their corporeal physicality and their thoughts and feelings seem to swamp me momentarily. Each one makes me sick and dizzy.

The medic arrives and she checks that Jones did the right thing, and soon the paramedic and technician arrive in their green jumpsuits and get him on a gurney. By now Innocent is here, walking along side him telling him he’s such a stupid idiot.

I try to keep up. Twice I get left behind but I make it to the ambulance and the doors are slammed in my face. It pulls away and in a panic I leap, trying for the roof of the ambulance. I land flat on my ‘face’. I think for a moment I see a man with a smart suit and silver hair shake his said sadly at me before he laughs gently, but then he’s gone.

I’m now stuck in the car park. Someone comes out for a crafty fag – except I realise it’s not a real cigarette. It’s DC Grey and his pretend electronic thing. He looks a little grey himself under his rich chocolate brown skin. He had a lot of respect for my boss. A little digging and I found that Lewis had been kind to him as a sergeant when Morse investigated Grey’s Dad’s death. If only Morse had investigate Mum’s I’m sure he’d have picked up on what was going on...

Grey closes his eyes and mutters a little prayer for Lewis’ recovery. It’s the first time I’ve seen someone pray since my... death. Sparkles of white energy seem to flow and for a moment I see the air shimmer with white and gold and silver.

An angel?

A real angel?

Maybe.

So not all was in vain and mistaken?

I hope not.

Grey sees or feels nothing, of course, except for worry and compassion for his governor. He goes back inside. I follow quickly.

I try to find Barnaby and Jones. They are my key.

They are in one of the open rooms used for statement taking and child suspect interviews. There are two boys, an Asian and a ginger white kid. Both are about twelve or thirteen. I recognize neither of them.

But the two phones in evidence bags, those I do recognize.

There are two social workers and two legal aid solicitors and two significant adults. The white kid has a shaven ginger tattooed thug of a man and the Asian kid has a woman in a sari who is crying.

The Asian boy is also crying, hanging his head and muttering over and over about his Dad killing him and needing to do his GSCEs and not wanting to be excluded.

The white kid is defiant. Head held high, he glares at Barnaby and Jones with a smug look, daring them to contradict him.

“I already said, didn’t I?” he is saying. “My cousin fount’em.”

“Where?” asks Jones.

“Dunno.”

“And this cousin...”

“Harry. He’s grounded again, in’t he?”

“Where did you see him them?”

The boy rolls his eyes. “I already told you. I saw’d Harry at Church. At Mass. This morning, didn’t I? He says he’s fount these phones and can I sell ’em. He knows me and Jamil like going up the car boot sales at Blackbird and Barton and that. I said I’d try and sell ’em. He then says to me that me and Jamil can keep some of the money.”

“What about you Jamil? What do you have to say?” Barnaby asks.

“It is as Josh says. He came to my house for lunch – he always does at the weekends. We did our history course work assignment – we are doing a project together. Then we went to the bus stop and caught the number 5. We tried to sell the phones but everyone thought they were stolen.”

“Did you not think to hand the phones to the police station Jamil?”

“I know we should have done. They are two expensive phones. I felt bad. But Josh said if someone was stupid enough to lose a Blackberry they didn’t deserve it. I am truly sorry.” Jamil hangs his head again, perhaps in shame, his heavy black fringe shielding his face. I felt sorry for him. Obviously, so did Barnaby.

“Okay Jamil. You and you mother can go. There will be no further action, so whether you tell your husband is up to you Mrs Asraf. And Jamil?”

“Yes Sir?”

“It is really good that you have a friend like Josh, and that you want to help him with his schoolwork. But next time when you know what is the right thing to do, help Josh to see that too. Some people don’t always find it so easy to be able to see clearly the right path.”

“Oi!” shouts Josh’s father, obviously picking up on an oblique criticism.

“I’m sorry,” Jamil says again.

“Thank you,” says Mrs. Asraf shyly.

“Thank you Inspector,” the solicitor says. We don’t have chief inspectors in Oxfordshire, so perhaps the solicitor can be forgiven for getting Barnaby’s rank wrong. It’s so easy for a hard worked legal aid lawyer called away from his Sunday lunch to make a mistake, I suppose. Barnaby obviously thinks so, he does not correct him.

The social worker mutters something about taking no action and leaves first, in a hurry to her next emergency weekend call out I assume, followed by the duty solicitor and then Mrs Asraf and her son. Josh, his father and Barnaby and Jones remain.

“Now Josh,” Barnaby says gently, picking up both phones in their plastic evidence bags. “These phones belonged to a man who was assaulted and murdered last night.”

“A policeman, in point of fact,” Jones adds.

“I don’t know nothing about that!” Josh protests. But he no longer looks defiant, but scared.

“Can you help us Josh?” Barnaby asks just as gently.

“He was a well-liked officer here, in this station,” growls Jones, a tad menacingly.

Was I...?

“Look! I don’t know nothing about no murder!” Josh shouts. “Harry told me they was fount at the top of the Westgate. It’s where him and his gang go hang out. They call 'emselves the Oxpen Westies, coz half of 'em come from the Oxpen Estate and the other half from the houses around Westgate, yeah? But it’s all stupid kids stuff, yeah? They strut about and talk about booze and ganga and bitches and claim they’ve got guns, but it’s all an act. Maybe they got knives and that and they is scary at school but look... they wouldn’t kill no policeman! Or no-one! No way!”

“Someone threw him from the top of the Westgate,” Jones says.

“These are kids, right? He was a policeman! Harry and that must ’ave fount the phones!” Josh looks panicked now. Act or not, Josh knows his cousin and his gang could beat him up. But he’s also rattled by my death. I can tell.

“Why was you cousin grounded Josh?” Barnaby asks.

“He says he didn’t get in ’til gone four in the morning. Him and his little brother. They woke their Mum up. She got mad coz he kept Tel out all night. He’s only ten, right?”

Ah. And a vicious little psychopath to boot. You are not lucky with your cousins Joshua Smith.

“Not only that,” Mr. Smith suddenly adds, “My sister-in-law was really angry at the state of ’em. Sick and blood and booze all over their clothes. Wouldn’t tell her why. She did get mad coz they’d been drinking and fighting, but...” he shrugs. “Me brother’s own two. Can’t believe it...” he shakes his head sadly and ruffles Josh’s hair. “My boy, he’s a good boy, right? It was wrong of him with the phones, he do know that now, don’t you?”

“Yes Dad. Sorry Inspector. Sergeant.” He hangs his head.

They take details of the cousins, and reluctantly, the other gang members that Josh knows about.

But my ‘head’ is itching in that now familiar way. I hope I’m going to the hospital to see Himself.

 

~

 

Oh!

My flat!

With John Barnaby?!

I’ve travelled back in time again. This is so confusing. Not to mention weird.

Barnaby has made my Dad some tea and they are sitting, talking.

“We never got on,” Dad says. “He got too posh. Sometimes I think he looked down on me, at any rate.”

Oh Dad...

I’m horribly ashamed to say that until recently it was true. I was a revolting snob. In my defence it had been part self-defensive armour until it became me. Robbie stripped it back, layer by layer, all my coatings of armour against the bullying and unhappiness and self-loathing...

I’m sorry...

Barnaby is making some kind of non-committal, sympathetic noise.

“I was so proud of him. Always. Scholarships. Cambridge. Even when he decided the priesthood wasn’t for him. Don’t know where he got his faith from? Not me, I’ve always been more lapsed than holy. Maybe when his Mum died, Father Edwards was always so nice to him. My sister was going to be a nun when she was little, but she lost her faith completely in the end.”

“Both his Mum and his Aunt are dead?”

“Yeah. His auntie, my sister, she came to live with us, to help out, but then she got sick. Really sick and disabled. So it was us helping her. My James was always so good. So patient. We missed him so bad when he was at school and then university. The council sent around home helps, but it weren’t the same. Not the same. This...” Dad gestures around my flat, “... is what I would expect. Not the washing up not done. James was always neat and tidy.

“Is that the stress, do you think? They said first – the police officer who came to tell me about James that is – he said that it might be suicide. So did your sergeant.”

“Thank you Jones,” Barnaby mutters to himself under his breath.

“Like his Mum,” Dad goes on sadly.

“His mother...?”

“Yeah. She drank. Drowned.”

“But not an accident?”

“Maybe. But she left a note though, saying she was a terrible mother and we’d be better off without her.”

We weren’t! She wasn’t! She loved me! She was fun!

She was also bipolar, often drunk, frequently stoned and forgot things like keys and food and clean nappies, and later she forgot the time school started, packed lunches and PE kits. She smelt lovely. Okay, she smelt of what I can now identify as patchouli, cannabis, gin and cigarettes, but it was the most wonderful smell to me. She made up stories about fairies and tree spirits, aliens and monsters or the best ones, ones about the two of us travelling the world and sometimes the universe. She made my toys and the stories come alive, and she made me castles, moon bases, spaceships and farms out of cardboard boxes, toilet roll tubes, tissue paper and glue. She made little dolls peg knights, spacemen and farmers to go with them. She was an artist!

And she also drowned by the Lake above the Chase on the Estate, near the old ugly Fountain, opposite the Summerhouse. I was seven.

She said she was so proud of me. I wonder is she still is?

And along with the crafts and the mass cake baking sessions went the times when she lay on the sofa weeping and drinking gin, the room a fug of cigarette and cannabis smoke, when it was ‘shut up James’, ‘stay still James’, ‘God James, I wish you’d never been born’ and ‘no you can’t have a fucking cuddle!’

She suffered with bipolar. I understand that now. Then, Mummy was either very exciting and very angry and sad. Dad shouted at her either way – either for keeping me off school to play games with or for forgetting to take me to school or feed me. Protecting me again, you see. But I didn’t understand that then, I thought he was cross with Mummy.

She made a big hole in our family. My auntie tried to fill it, but then she got sick...

Dad was explaining to Barnaby, “... but they ruled an open verdict. Couldn’t make up their minds whether it was suicide or death by misadventure. She always wore those long floaty skirts...”

Oh yes. Some with bells or tassels that I’d play with when I sat on her lap and she read to me! 

“... They dragged her down.”

Like the Lady of the Lake. She lives in the lake. Or she did, in my mind. Or like Lady Shallot. Too innocent and pure, dying of heartbreak, married to prosaic and boring Dad. My Lancelot turned out not to be much good either. Like mother like son. Did she mean to drown, I wonder?

“I’m sorry Mr. Hathaway,” Barnaby says.

Dad gets up and wanders about my living room, looking at my books mostly. “Does this look like the pad of a posh poof, or an ex priest? Or both maybe?”

“I can’t really comment.”

“I always knew my boy was gay. Ever since he was quite little. I just wanted him to be happy, but I don’t think he ever got that. We’ve never really moved on, you know? Past the sulky, resentful teenager and the shouting father bit. We always end up yelling at each other. I try so hard not to. And now...”

Dad sits down again and starts to cry. Barnaby gives him some tissues and makes him some more tea. I sit down next to my father and try to press myself next to him, willing him to know I’m here, that I love him, that I’m sorry I was such a terrible son.

“The pathologist has ruled murder,” Barnaby eventually says gently. “I know it’s not much comfort, but you will be able to bury your son properly.”

“Unlike his Mum.” Dad is silent for a while, and then asks, “Can I meet him?”

“Who Mr. Hathaway?”

“DI Robert Lewis. His boss. His lover. The man who broke my boy’s heart. I’m not stupid, what ever James used to think, Chief Inspector, I do know. Even though he tried to not tell me anything, it was written all over him – the love, unrequited at first, and then not. And then his misery last time I spoke to him. My lovely, gentle James...”

I snuggle into my Dad, lay my head on his lap and hold on tightly to him. My Dad. My poor, lost, heartbroken, bereaved Dad. I spent so long helping my boss in his grief and I neglected my own Dad. Blamed him even.

I wasn’t a good son. But I loved him. I hope he knows that. I hope he does.

I really do.


	10. Chapter 10

This is so strange. For the second, no third, time, I feel as if I’ve been asleep. I was at home, with my Dad, curled up on my sofa, my head on his lap.

Now where am I?

It’s so dark.

Oh. I’m back next to the mortuary drawer, curled up in front of where... I am? My body is. It’s pitch black, but if I concentrate I’m sort of... lit up? Illuminated? I can see a little around me at any rate, as if the light emanates from me. I get up and wander about. Such a bleak, dark, concrete and whitewash sort of place. I’ve been here many, many times, of course. With Himself. Sometimes without. With DI Knox before Him. Sometimes with Hobson, sometimes another pathologist. Watching Laura or whoever with some poor victim’s body. Trying not to look but curiosity always getting the better of me. The nausea would sometimes last for hours.

They’ve done that to my body.

Twice!

The clock says it’s ten minutes to midnight.

I’ve moved forward then. I’ve been dead nearly a day then. Sort of. I suppose. The flip-flopping in Time makes it hard for me to tell.

I wonder is he’s here. In ICU? Cardiac Care? A general medical ward? Cardiac Care on Level 2 seems to be the most obvious place.

But here I am, down in the second basement, three floors down, with so many closed doors between us.

I go to the door and try to relax. I close my eyes and concentrate, trying to remember that disturbing feeling as a person walks through me. The momentary awareness of flesh, bone, muscle, blood pumping, the whole lot down to the cellular level floating though me...

The door is solid. It’s wood and plastic, metal and glass.

But I’m not solid.

I’m not real. Not really here at all.

I’m not a scientist. I’m a theologian. Classics, the arts and humanities, these I know. I’m also a policeman. But apart from the forensic sciences, which I’ve only recently read and self-taught, I am most eminently not a scientist!

I do not know the molecular structure of wood or glass, plastic or metal.

Will I feel...? See...? Wood and glass molecules, metal and plastic ones, their various elements...? The way cells rush through me as a person walks right through me?

I close my eyes again.

I am spirit. I am not here. I am not real.

I step, eyes still closed.

I open my eyes.

I’m in the grey concrete corridor outside the mortuary door.

Right.

No, left. For the stairs.

Each door, it gets easier. I walk past the occasional porter or cleaner. Once a nurse. And then I see a girl sobbing. I take a step towards her. She’s so little and thin, dressed in a pink nightie. She is a mass of bruises where tubes have gone in and out of her thin little arms and up her little baby snub nose. She has absolutely no hair.

She sees me and runs desperately towards me.

Before I’m even consciously aware of what I’m doing I’ve scooped her up in my arms and I’m comforting her as she sobs, grateful for someone to see her, to hold her.

But she speaks Polish. I do not.

I stroke her poor baldhead and sit down, settling her on my lap. I want to tell her she can make her hair grow back if she wants, as I ‘healed’ my broken head and ‘mended’ my ripped and torn clothes. But I don’t have the words. Not in her language. I don’t know what to do. I feel awful about the fact that I too am taking some comfort from the ‘physical’ contact.

Physical!

The girl is as dead as I.

Suddenly a bright light appears at the end of the corridor. It is dazzling. I catch sight of more shimmering figures of gold, silver and bright white.

And then a man walks out of the light. He is elderly, and leans on a stick, but for all that he is powerfully built. He has white hair in tufts above his ears, is very tanned and has age spots on his hands, cheek and the top of his baldhead.

“Zofia!” he calls.

Zofia looks up from my lap, she had buried her face in my chest. She smiles joyfully and runs to him, as he calls to her and talks to her, holding out his hands. He scoops her up, and then steps forward and puts a hand on my shoulder and smiles at me.

“Thank you.”

“It’s all right,” I say numbly.

He turns, carrying his granddaughter into the light.

Then he, the child, the angels or spirits or whatever they are, and the dazzlingly bright light, they all vanish.

And I’m left wondering why it never crossed my mind to head towards the bright light too.

Then I remember. I know. I continue my climb to level 2 and DI Robert Lewis.

 

~

 

When I finally find him I think he’s asleep. I sit down in a chair left next to his bed. He opens his eyes immediately.

“Sir!” I say stupidly.

“I know this is a dream James. I know I’m alive. I can hear those bloody bleeps.”

“Are you all right Sir?”

“Had a minor heart attack. I’m just in overnight for observations. I’ll live. But I wonder what the fuck caused it, eh James?” He is suddenly angry.

“I’m sorry. I never meant to...”

“Did you jump? Did you want to? Ah, don’t bothering answering, this is my dream, you’ll say what I want.”

“I thought about it. I did. But I changed my mind. For you, and my Dad, and just because I was too scared to. I did change my mind Sir, I did...”

“Oh James, what happened to you, pet, what happened?”

“Don’t make me remember, don’t ask me, please, I can’t...”

My head is buzzing. I can’t be here! I want to be here! I don’t want to remember again. Please...

He reaches out a hand to my arm. It passes straight through me. He looks startled and I see a wary understanding cross his eyes. He’s beginning to realise I am there, with him, I think.

“Oh James, my love. Forgive me...”

“Dad!” hisses a female voice in a worried whisper. “Who are you talking to?”

It’s Lyn. I should have realised. The owner of the bag under the chair and the cardigan draped over its back. She has a Styrofoam cup and a Kitkat in her hands.

“James, “ he mumbles, confused. He looks a little worried, but it’s nothing to the alarm that is crossing his daughter’s face. She looks at where he’s looking, at me in the chair. Of course, she sees nothing. Nevertheless, I get up so she can sit down. I don’t want her sitting through me and I certainly don’t what Himself to see that.

“Oh Dad,” she says sadly as she sits down, putting her snack and drink down on the floor with her handbag.

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” he says, his eyes screwing up like a small child about to cry.

“I know. I know.” She strokes his hair, kisses his forehead. Their roles have reversed.

“I love him,” he mutters. “Didn’t want to hurt you, shock you and Mark, so I hurt him instead. Should have been braver...”

“I know Dad, I know...”

He can no longer see me.

Or hear me.

I can’t bear it. He seems so vulnerable. Old. Weak. Confused. Sick. I simply can’t bear it.

My death did this to him.

I did this to him!

I can’t be here!

I turn and run. My panic makes running through doors and walls so much easier. As I run out an old lady calls out to me but as I turn a young man dressed in a Second World War army uniform I take to be her husband is meeting her. As I look she sort of de-ages, becomes as young as he, both dressed now in fashionable clothes of the 1930s. She waves but I turn again because I can’t bear it, that light isn’t for me but I can’t stay with the man I love because I’ve destroyed him...

I’m so tired by the time I get back to the mortuary. I don’t even know why I ran here. It’s as if some invisible cord pulls me back here. Snaps me back. I slide to the floor and curl up next to that cold steel drawer that contains my broken and smashed remains.

I’m so tired and confused myself.

Concussed even?

Maybe. My head is smashed like an egg.

All the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men...


	11. Chapter 11

I can’t get it out of my head. Our relationship. Friendship with benefits. A superior officer exploiting his junior partner’s infatuation even? Whatever he says our relationship is – was. Whatever DCI Barnaby and DS Jones seem to think it was.

Except now he told his daughter he loved me. The same daughter he was too afraid to come out to.

It’s all a muddle.

We never talked. That is the crux of the matter. I fell in love with him in a matter of days after meeting him for the first time at Heathrow. I’d been so annoyed, too, I remember, that Innocent had sent me and not some humble DC or PC. Mind you, I’d not been promoted long, and only in CID a while. And I’d not had much proper experience either, desk work, and secretarial work, really. Innocent’s little gopher. No wonder there had been such resentment with me. A fine detective brain, train him up, Innocent had told Knox. But he didn’t like me. I was too poncy, too educated and too bloody holy. He couldn’t even pigeon hole me, which annoyed him more than anything, I think. He’d shout down my suggestions then pass them off as his own ideas.

But I fell head over heels with my new DI. What does that say about me? Oh, I tried to bury it and hide it. It was a sin.

Or so I thought.

But my love only strengthened and grew the longer I knew him, as our working relationship and then tenuous friendship grew. He tolerated my foibles, rejoiced in my quotes and my education in general, for all of his teasing. He understood and forgave my weaknesses. Lies, I mean. As he knew more about me his opinion never seemed to change, his respect and liking of me never diminished. He gave me the strength and courage to be myself.

To finally be me. The James Hathaway I was meant to be.

I was meant to be for Him. I still feel that.

Yet, then, in all that he made me safe and proud and unashamed of the awkward person I was, I hid my love, tried to hide my sexuality. Even after he knew I was gay, even after he really knew and I knew he knew, I pretended not to be. Maybe I wasn’t so unashamed after all?

And all the while he fancied me. Maybe even fell in love with me?

He hid his sexuality as much as I did mine. Believe me, he is bisexual. He was absolutely faithful to his wife, of that I am sure of. But I am equally sure that before her he had slept with other men as well as women. Maybe after her death too? Drunk while on his ‘out-of-sight-out-of-mind/problem gone away’ posting DCI Strange had sent him on? Drunk and suffering from PTSD, of which I have no doubt the sudden death of his wife had given him, did he go in for the casual shag or too? After all, the British Virgin Islands, far from home in the far warmer climate, with his brandy habit and PTSD, he could have relaxed his usual quite strict sexual moral code.

Couldn’t he?

I don’t know.

I hope he wore a condom there then.

Oh. What am I thinking? I’m dead. It doesn’t really matter now if he’d given me AIDS, does it?

But my point here is he knew damn well what he was doing with my body.

Or at least, appeared to know what he was doing. Perhaps he was pretending to be as relaxed about it all and much more experienced and know what he was doing than he really was?

I know I was.

I can’t decide who was the selfish one first time. Or the deceptive one? Or perhaps it was just both of us?

Or maybe neither of us? In sex, as in our work and friendship, we never talked, never really communicated, never really told the other what he was thinking or feeling much at all. Expecting the other to be able to read it all in the subtext. Something hidden and understood. But never spoken of.

And until I returned from Kosovo and saw Hobson snog him I had always thought that it was working out just fine for us that way.

 

~

After Bethan Vickery had been charged, he told me he was going to the hospital. To see them. The psychiatrist, Dr. Gansa, and his poor wife in the coma. I wasn’t surprised. It was just the kind of compassionate, but wholly unnecessary and unexpected follow up that he always would make that made me fall in love with him in the first place. What surprised, confused, and yes, hurt me, was when he had phoned from the hospital to tell me that seeing poor Claire Gansa and her husband’s devotion had made him think about life, about death and lost chances, and that he was meeting Dr. Hobson and maybe going to even ask her out, if this Franco wasn’t too important.

I can’t remember what I said. Did. I must have made banal platitudes as all my hope died in one phone call. After all, I had hidden my feelings and my sexuality less and less over the past few months and all he had done was ignore the little hints and even date that bloody ex sergeant Ali McLennan in my face, as if to rub my nose in the fact I wasn’t special or that he was heterosexual – he had certainly finally seen how much I loved him during that case, that was for sure! But in that McLennan woman he had demonstrated yet again, apart from the sainted Mrs Lewis of course, he obviously had poor choice in women. Perhaps he had inherited it from his former guv?

Oh yes, I had heard the stories.

He told me that night to leave the paperwork and go home and chill. Put my feet up, listen to music and relax. It was done. The insanity of the murderer had unsettled me and he had seen that. But relax? The chance would have been a fine thing indeed! I stayed late and worked through the night until five hours had gone by. It was gone ten that night. I only realised because he phoned.

“James. You’re not at home!” He sounded both aggrieved and worried.

“No Sir. I’ve been sorting everything out for the CPS.”

He sighed crossly. “I told you to relax man! Now get back here now!”

“Back where?”

“Your flat. Your takeaway’s getting cold.”

“My what?”

“I got you food man!”

I rushed home obediently to find him sitting on my doorstep, his car parked up the road. No takeaway was to be seen. Instead, a huge bouquet – two-dozen roses in fact! – and a supermarket carrier bag.

“Have you eaten the takeaway Sir? Are these for Dr. Hobson? I’m sure she’ll...”

He stood up awkwardly, picking up the bag and bouquet one-handed, his other strapped up to give his shoulder chance to heal. He made a fuss when I tried to help even though he was obviously uncomfortable.

“Can we go inside James?" he practically snarled, but I guessed that to be pain rather than anger at me for going against his orders and working late again.

“Um, yeah,” I replied and unlocked the door.

Once inside he said, “These are for you James.” He handed me the roses and then produced a rather nice bottle of Pinot Noir and a box of expensive hand-made chocolates.

“Um...? Thank you?” I was confused, to say the least.

“Couldn’t decide on what was best. What was more appropriate. Of course, none of it might be, but I know I wouldn’t object if Val – or anyone I liked – had gone and got me any of this.”

“Appropriate...?” I still wasn’t getting him.

He sighed and rubbed his eye. He looked a bit shy, and younger, and my heart did a little back flip. “Can I buy you dinner James?” he asked awkwardly.

“I thought you were...” I was convinced he was supposed to be on a date with Hobson. I still couldn’t quite hope... let myself believe... that he... 

“No.” He shook his head fiercely, that I remember. “Can I take you out? To dinner.”

“As I date? Are you asking me on a date?” I’m ashamed to say my voice sort of squeaked, as if I were fourteen again with a breaking voice. I needed someone to pinch me.

“Yeah. As a date.” He laughed nervously at what he was about to say. “Will you go out with me James?”

“What about Dr. Hobson? I thought you and she...?”

“We talked it through. Besides...”

“Besides?” What was I? Second best?

“Besides. Kissing Laura felt ever so slightly like kissing me sister. Maybe we’ve left it to late, maybe it was never meant to be...”

“You don’t have a sister,” I said stupidly, not knowing how to react to the revelation. Part of my brain was still just screaming: he kissed Hobson! Not fair!

“You know what I mean!” he snapped lightly.

“That I’m second choice?" I let out, not meaning to.

“No pet. That kissing her made me realise who I’d much rather be kissing than anyone else on Earth!”

“Me?” I more sorted of mouthed than spoke aloud, pointing to myself.

“Can we sit down love, you’re sort of looming over me and I’ve not kissed anyone taller before, you great long streak of nothing!” 

And he pulled me to the sofa. Sat next to me. And kissed me!

I was numb. In shock.

Then I relaxed into it.

And kissed back.

And it is still the most perfect kiss I have ever had. Words cannot describe it or the feeling.

So don’t try to tell me now he was just using me for as an easy bitch to have a quick bang until something better came along. Don’t tell me it wasn’t poor Laura Hobson that was being used more than me.

A proof of heterosexuality? Or normality? Of manhood?

He decided he wanted a beard and didn’t even have the grace to tell me but expected me to understand.

But how could I? I wasn’t born in the fifties and been a teen in the sixties and I didn’t spend my wild twenties in the seventies. I didn’t even have any wild times in my twenties, I studied hard, rowed, did voluntary work, entered a Seminary, came out of it and joined the police. No boyfriends, no wild parties, just studies and early nights. I get the impression Robbie Lewis knew how to have a good time when he was young! 

I was a small child when the battle against Clause 28 took place. I grew up at a time when gay people achieved equal rights. I might personally have a faith, but after Will I had long learned not to judge anyone but myself and expect equality and respect for all.

Why would he need to hide his love for me?

 

~

 

I seem to have got lost in my thoughts. Is to forgive to understand or can we just forgive? He wants me to forgive him.

I love him and of course I want to forgive him the last couple of months. But I’m sure the belief that he would stop hiding our relationship once he retired had come from him and not just my wishful thinking.

After the first, rather disastrous, non communicative attempt at love making and a few more stumbling attempts at his place, he told Innocent I needed a break and he had to see Lyn and arranged for us both to have three days uninterrupted leave – Thursday night through to Monday morning. He told me to pack and discreetly leave my bag in the boot of his car Thursday morning.

“What should I pack Sir?”

“Well,” he grinned dirtily – he was constantly looking at my arse and grinning in the early days and weeks of our new sexual relationship. I had told him to be careful, but he denied he was doing it! But he then said, “Your birthday suit might be all you need lad. Plan to have my wicked way with you in all sorts of positions.” I blushed beetroot red and he laughed happily. “Jeans, t-shirts, jumpers, a coat, good trainers or boots James, as it’s all pretty mountainous where we’re going, so if we venture out of bed we’ll be walking. If you’re not happy with your work suit, another for a nice meal out.”

I nodded and did as I was told. I always did as I was told – as a sergeant and as a boyfriend.

 

~

 

He took me to Wales, to the Brecon Beacons. It was already dark when we arrived, very dark, but the night was clear and the sky was amazing. So full of stars. It was also bitter, condensation huffed out of our mouths as we made our way from the car to the door. It smelt fresh, of clean air and fresh grass and frost. I’d never been any where like it in Britain before.

The hotel was a four star one; half way up a mountain just above a tiny village. I couldn’t help thinking about the cannibals in Torchwood. He didn’t get the reference. When he finally realised what I was talking about he told me I didn't even know what proper Dr. Who was! We argued good-naturedly all the way to our room.

We dumped our bags and fell on the bed. In no time at all we were kissing and then more...

He slowed us down, suggested we shower together. He went down on me, my first blowjob. You see, no doubt in my mind he was bisexual and experienced!

After I’d stopped shaking we went back to the bed, falling in a tangle of wet limbs, kissing and licking and nipping. He had made the right decision, he was right, I was so much more relaxed than I had been in my own flat, or his. I wondered if subconsciously I’d been waiting for a shout.

He gave me a little shove. “Turn over for me James,” he whispered in my ear, before kissing the top of it and biting my earlobe.

I smiled and did so.

He greased himself up liberally, squirting a little over me, before pushing slowly, so very slowly, his cock gently opening me and sliding its way in so very slowly, opening me and stretching me until he was inside to the hilt, his balls pressed against mind, his chest and stomach pressed heavily on my back. He leaned forward and I twisted my neck so he could give me an awkward kiss.

“Better, eh? You’re so much more relaxed now, eh love?”

I nodded and rocked back against him and he began to move, every thrust pressed deep in the spot inside me and soon as I was as hard as him again.

We came together.

He laughed. “Oh the joys of being so young and recovering so fast,” he said, and I thought he was teasing but he was just pleased to make me come twice.

We snuggled up afterwards and decided on room service and just staring at mindless TV. I felt too rude and dirty to go to the hotel dining room. He had told me the hotel website had said it was gay friendly, but the woman on the desk had looked shocked at us. I suppose it may have been the age difference. Or perhaps I stupidly called him Sir again. He looked liked a dirty old man screwing his employee or something.

Well, he was.

Or something.

I slept with my head on his chest, him stroking my hair. I woke still there, to the sounds of sheep bleating and wind rustling in the trees.

We made love again, then showered separately and went to breakfast. He suggested a walk, so we climbed the mountain, came down the other side, had lunch in a pub then caught a bus back to the small town the hotel was above. He took a hot bath, claiming he’d ache otherwise. I curled up on the bed and read. When he came out we made love again, this time he wanted me on my knees. The feeling was intense, he could move so deep and hard within me I lost all sense of anything else. I was his so much. I loved him so much. I suddenly regretted my earlier pretence, I now wanted to tell him he was the first man I ever let do this. But how could I? He would be hurt that I hadn’t trusted him in the first place, and hadn’t I already gone there twice at work? I hated myself. I should have trusted him. I had just been so embarrassed.

We went down to dinner that evening, to a candle lit side table, eating Welsh lamb with red current jelly and some vegetables I can’t even remember. He had some kind of death by chocolate and I had some kind of tiramisu, but we ended up sharing each others’, feeding each other titbits across the table. Some people stared, but only in the kind of indulgent, smiling way people do to those newly in love. He had chosen well.

We made love again that night, this time he went down on me again, this time putting two fingers inside me too and his mouth did amazing things. It was so deliciously intense. But he wouldn’t let me try to return the favour. He said he was too old. I got upset, it didn’t seem fair. He hugged me and told me to stop being ageist. We watched rubbish TV again from the bed, snuggled up, legs and arms all a-tangle, my head on his chest again. It was all I had ever dreamed of and more. I’m sure he even teased me about us being in the honeymoon suite and that maybe, one day, when he finally retired, it might be us for real on honeymoon. He also firmly reminded me of how much we had to be a secret for now. He made it out more for my benefit – it might hamper my promotion and future career prospect, and being the sensitive soul I was, which was said without any of his usual irony or humour, the gossip would kill me! 

He was probably right. 

He fell asleep early so I had a bath and read.

We drove out the next day, to the coast. We walked along a windswept beach, hand in hand, beachcombing. We ate at another pub and came back and made love again. It was when I discovered that he could fuck me face to face. It felt too intense, too much, so I don’t know what. I could see him. But then I couldn’t feel him as much. I told him I liked him lying on my back, skin to skin, totally touching, the fact he could kiss my neck. He smiled down at me and bent forward to kiss me. Afterwards, he kissed my forehead and told me he loved me.

I was suddenly curious. How did he know so well what I would like, how I felt. I meant, really, did he really know that I would like to take, that I had fantasized for so many years, that was all I wanted. Or was it just he had been straight and decided that was what he wanted. Was he giving or selfish?

“I’m a detective pet," he had teased. “I detect things.”

“How?”

“Your body language. The way you look at me, respond to me.”

I panicked then, thinking everyone was noticing, could tell I was gay. Could tell I was a complete bitch. He took so long to reassure me and calm me down, make me hear what he was saying, how he was talking about us in private, about how he had been observing me intently for years.

The last morning we made love again, with him lying on my back again, arms holding me tightly, moving inside me so slowly, making it last. We then showered, packed, had breakfast and checked out. We stopped in the Wye Valley and ate al fresco – although in the car, the weather turning even colder.

After than we found it easier to cope with our changed relationship – colleagues and superior and junior officer at work, work friends at the pubs we always attended in and around Oxford, but lovers in our flats and when we drove out of Oxford for a meal somewhere.

At least, that was what I had thought of as our relationship until the Friday before my death, although the previous two months had been hell.

Although, now I think my perception was the truth, he had just had some kind of awful panic attack that caused him to grab hold of Laura Hobson and just use her to prove to himself and the world he was straight, normal, a real man...

I know that feeling. But I am a real man. Gay. A bitch even. Yes, when I fancy a man I want to take. But I’m still a man. And here I am, dead, knowing now I am not sinful. I was made to be that way. I am what I am, or rather, I was what I was. Now I’m dead. I am spirit. But not intrinsically sinful. Have sinned, yes. Lies. Deceit. Contemplating suicide. Despair. Self-harm. Smoking and drinking too much alcohol and coffee and not eating enough. My body was a gift to look after. Trying to be straight and using Fiona – even if she was doing the same to me, it was my intent to use. Getting drunk and using poor Alan Peterson for comfort. All these things were wrong.

As was tripping up a suspect and pushing him down the stairs! Very wrong.

But mostly, not showing my Dad how much I loved him. Not taking the time to understand him. Blaming him for things when he always, always tried to do his best for me.

These things I repent. But not a loving relationship. And it WAS a loving relationship. Until the end.

But that first weekend we had away together seemed to heal something in me. I still struggled with my faith after what we did – although only alone or at Mass – but not again with the terrible memories of Augustus. And because of that I just never tensed up or froze again. I always felt loved and respected. And safe.

And deep down, although he didn’t guess he was the first, he did know it was Mortmaigne that was getting in the way. Hence our romantic weekend away and his spoiling of me.

You see, although we never spoke, we did always read each other in the silence and the subtext.


	12. Chapter 12

~  
What is this? I’ve been asleep again! I suppose there is enough religious and spiritual texts and literature along with a considerable amount of poetry that compares sleep to death.

And vice versa.

I open my eyes to stare at a small part of my desk at work. I appear to be in my chair, slumped over my desk and arm, asleep on my desk.

Oh!

It’s all been a dream! I just fell asleep at work again!

I sit up and yawn and stretch.

The first thing I notice is the distinct lack of reality – or air! – in my yawn. The second is my arm appears to pass through someone, I feel the disorientation of flesh, blood and bone and feelings – in this case sleepiness and the need for coffee. The third thing is Barnaby, passing my desk on the way to Lewis’.

He has just sat down and switched on the computer when Jones appears, looking equally sleepy.

“Morning Jones. Sleep well?”

“The little I had, yes Sir. Traffic was hell.”

“I weaved my way up through B roads and country lanes Jones. Took me less than twenty minutes. Tom gave me the route last night. Avoided all the Midsomer commuters to Oxford and the M40 junction.”

“He might have told me,” Jones mutters darkly before saying brightly, “Tea Sir?”

“Coffee I think Jones, don’t you? If you could rustle up a couple of pastries for us that would be a good idea, don’t you think? Unless you’ve had breakfast?”

I don’t think Jones has shaved, much less fed himself from the look of him.

“I’ll have to go out of the station.”

“A good idea. I noticed a very promising looking French patisserie opposite Christchurch yesterday.”

“Right you are Sir.”

Jones exits just as Julie enters. 

“Good morning WPC Lockhart. I really appreciate all the work you put in yesterday. I will make sure Chief Superintendent Innocent approves overtime.”

“Thank you Sir, but I’d have done it for no pay. I’d work a dozen Sundays on no pay as long as we can find the bastards who hurt the sarge.”

“You liked him?”

“He scared me a bit, actually. Wasn’t easy to be friends with. But yeah, after all that, he was okay. We used to...”

“What?”

“Laugh at him a bit. His posh little ways, his clever quotes and that. And his campness. But mostly the fact he was so devoted to his guv. I mean, we all admire Inspector Lewis, but he’s no oil painting, is he?”

Well, thanks a lot Julie Lockhart! And who are ‘we’? Not Gurdip I hope?

“I wouldn’t know Lockhart. Love is blind, as they say. I hope you appreciate that all you have heard or seen in connection to DI Lewis is confidential?”

“Of course Sir.”

“Good. Good. I take it you came in this office to tell me something?”

“What? Oh yes. I’ve spoken to the two school secretaries. They are going to let us know which, if any, of those boys, attend school. I only hope that Joshua Smith hasn’t warned his cousin.”

“I doubt it. I got the impression that there is no love lost between his father and his auntie, and I doubt Mr. Smith would have let his son call his cousin. Shocked, wouldn’t you say?”

“I wasn’t privy to the interview Sir.”

“No, of course you weren’t. Well, thank you Lockhart. If you could save Jones the job and organize the back up for these arrests. You know this station much more than either of us.”

“Of course Sir. And I’ll let you know when I hear back from the schools.”

It says nine minutes past eight on the clock in the main office. Jones returns fifteen minutes later with coffee and breakfast. Eight after that Julie returns with the news that the youngest three boys are in school, but the five oldest – my fucking rapists! – have failed to show. This is normal. 

Quelle surprise!

Apparently the Head wants a personal explanation before she is prepared to give more information. 

Barnaby sighs and rolls his eyes before asking for the number and picking up Lewis’ phone.

 

~

 

I seem to be moving in a more linear fashion through Time again, ever since I woke by my body and went to see Robbie in hospital. I hope he’s okay.

After a brief, terse, authoritative chat with the head teacher Barnaby signals to Jones and calls to Julie, asking her if she wants to be in on the collars.

She jumps at the chance.

It’s easier to keep up now I can just go through any door swinging back in my face. Innocent comes out of her office and walks with them to the car park.

“Everything strictly by the book,” she demands.

“Of course. Any news on Inspector Lewis Ma’am?”

“Apparently he has spent a comfortable night. He has to make changes to his lifestyle and is on leave now until he retires, but he is doing fine. Just waiting to see the consultant before he can be discharged. His daughter has come down from Manchester with her partner to look after him. They intend to stay at least a week.”

“That is good news, isn’t it Jones?”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

Yes it is! Very good news indeed!

 

~

 

First we go to North Hinksey Primary School in South Oxford. It’s a modern build on the ground of a Victorian Church of England one. The main building remains but the focus is a cluster of very new twenty-first century open plan classrooms and play area. We join three squad cars in the car park, blocking in teachers’ cars and access. Rows of curious small faces peer out of classrooms. Two women, who introduce themselves as head teacher and school secretary, meet Barnaby. We follow them along corridors and walls that go past open plan classrooms. We – well, they - attract less attention and fuss than the boys in blue outside.

We reach a door with the notice: Miss Holdbrook, 6H, Y6 and then a printed poster than seems to have had self-portrait cartoons of 31 children pasted on to it. The Head knocks and we all enter. As we do Terence Smith takes one panicked look in our direction. He obviously hears the Head’s murmured explanation as he starts to slide out of his seat.

“Terence, could you come here please. These gentlemen are policemen. They just have a few questions, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Terence has other ideas. The door is blocked and as the classroom is one of the few enclosed rather than open plan classrooms he heads for the windows but he can only open them a few centimetres.

“Come on,” Jones is saying calmly, approaching him. “We just have some questions about your older brother and his friends in connection to the death of a policeman...”

The class lets out a collected gasp of 30 young and one adult shocked voice.

Terence grabs an empty chair and throws it out of the window, making a loud smash accompanied by about five girlish screams and squeals as the girls on the nearby table are covered with broken glass. 25 cries of shock or support accompany them. The Head yells for order but Terence is gone and I hear no more as I give chase pointlessly, sprinting after him through children and furniture and wall and glass and across the playing field.

He makes it as far as the back fence and begins climbing it when a young officer apprehends him.

He puts up a good fight.

By the time Barnaby and Jones arrive with the Head, secretary and class teacher one officer has a broken nose and the other is nursing a bitten hand. Terence Smith is still squirming in the firm grasp of both officers.

Jones sighs and produces hand cuffs and cuffs the boy’s hands behind his back,

“Is that really necessary?” demands the Head. The class teacher remains silence, and I almost see a bit of speculative jealousy in her eyes. If only, you can imagine her thinking...

“Yes,” Jones says curtly, nodding towards the officers as they now attempt to stem their collective flows of blood from one’s nose and the other’s hand.

“Terence Jones, I arrest you under suspicion for being an accessory to grievous bodily harm, serious intent to injure, sexual assault and murder. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention now, anything you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be given in evidence.”

“I didn’t do nothing!” he yells, panicking and afraid, struggling against Jones. He gives him a hard kick backwards in the shin and back head butts him and then squirms free, making a run for it. Before any officer gets him his class teacher has him and hands him to Barnaby.

“We can add assaulting three more police officers to your list of crimes, Terence,” Barnaby says sternly.

“I didn’t do nothing. I only kept watch. It was me brother! It was all the big ones! I didn’t do nothing!” he continues to yell as they lead him to the car.

Oh. Yeah. Right. You little shit. You had the idea for the oral rape, the line-up and to throw me off. You egged on the older ones. You were drunk and stoned and God alone knows how damaged your brain is because of it. You didn’t just stand watch. And don’t you dare use some miserable childhood as an excuse you little shit. I was abused and neglected too, but when have I ever committed a crime or hurt someone for the hell of it?

 

~

 

Next we are on to the Oxford Academy in Littlemore for the next youngest. The twins. Hopefully the head teacher will be more cooperative than she was on the phone.

As Barnaby and Jones – and I! – get out of the Chief Inspector’s car Jones’ phone rings.

“That was Hooper Sir,” he says after taking the call. “He thinks he’s found the watch and necklace, and a gold inscribed lighter: ‘JH, on your 30th, RL’...”

Yes. He gave me incredibly nice gifts even before we got together. At the time I started to think his love was paternal. I treasured it; it went in my bed with me, under my pillow, for the first few months after my birthday, which wasn’t the most safety conscious thing to do. I had to tell myself it was paternal, or else my hope would have been off the scale and I’d have sent myself for such a fall. 

Believing as I did then that He was straight.

“He wants to know what to do about getting Inspector Lewis to ID the items. Should he take them to hospital?”

“Get him to check on the situation re the Inspector’s health first, but yes. But get them to forensics for fingerprints and DNA. Where were they?”

“A Cash Converters on the Cowley Road. The manager told him two young lads came in this morning, about an hour ago. He’s happy to do an ID from files or an ID parade. He’s with the photofit artist now.”

“Good. Evidence. That’s what I like to hear Jones!”

 

~

 

Barnaby and Julie remain with the head teacher, who has rounded up a few surly looking boys from the top two years, the older gang members classmates. She seems to have taken on board that this is not the investigation of anti social behaviour or theft or even the sexual assault of another young girl or knife fight with another young boy. This is murder.

Of a police officer.

She is now bending over backwards to be as compliant and as helpful as possible.

I’m torn on whether to remain to see what these boys know of the bastards that raped me or follow Jones and uniform to arrest the tiny little identical buggers who helped throw me of the fucking car park.

The boys are not in their Year 8 science class, much to the embarrassment of the Year Head, a young West Indian man who doesn’t look old enough to have qualified, yet alone be in a responsible position.

Shyly, embarrassed, a young girl follows us back into the corridor and whispers to Jones, whom she has taken a shine to, that the twins will be in their ‘office’

The office turns out to be the Year 10 toilets at the other, senior, end of the school. They are caught red-handed, to even more embarrassment of the staff member, selling a small packet of grass to a sixth former. They are too stunned to protest when arrested under suspicion of murder, assault and as an accessory to sexual assault. Jones throws in possession with intent to supply for the sheer hell of it. Both boys’ blazer pockets are packed with small plastic bags of dried weed and white powder, drug identity yet unknown, and fistfuls of five and ten pound notes.

 

~

 

Reluctantly the twins confirm the possible locations with Barnaby before they are driven off to the station.

“You’re the local, Lockhart. Pick which one we try first.”

“It’s a mild, sunny day and they’ll have had plenty of time to get there after spending their Cash Converters cash, “ she grins weakly, “so I would say let’s try Grandpoint first.”

“Lead on WPC.” And Barnaby hands her his car keys. Jones sighs and gets in the back.

 

~

 

On the way there Hooper phones Jones again. Lewis has been discharged and although Miss Lewis is not happy about it he has arranged to meet the guv at his flat in half an hour to get a confirmed ID on the personal effects.

He’s out of hospital.

That’s good, at least.

I think.

 

~

 

I’ve been running with Time in a linear fashion now since I awoke at ten to midnight yesterday.

Just as if I were alive.

But unlike being alive no one knows I’m here. Okay, fine, people used to ignore me, even when I was asking them to do something. Authority was somewhat a problem at times. Particularly with some of the older men in CID. Shouting always made them smirk.

But being ignored until they’re bollocked by the DI is one thing. Being looked through – walked through! – is entirely another.

I’m bored. And lonely. I feel so powerless, watching the investigation unfurl, observing interviews, seeing some break and others defiant or deny all despite the increasing forensic and eye-witness evidence that is amassing.

Although of course, if I were here – there – alive! – I wouldn’t be part of this investigation. I would be a witness. The witness. The victim.

I was a victim.

I am the victim.

Story of my life. However hard I kicked against it.

Can we fight the inevitable? Raging against the dying of the light? Until we’ve lost the fight. Lost the light.

I need that light. 

But as the victim, the chief witness, I could tell them those five raped me, those six threw me off the car park; that one pushed me over, that one jumped on my back with his rollarblades and that one forced his cock into my mouth first.

And I could say that all the while that little scary psychopath with his frightingly high IQ and cold, cold, unemotional eyes told his elders what do to.

This is the kind of child the media screams about – what access to 18+ horror and porn and violence in movies and games does to a child.

What would I be like if I had access to such things rather than piano and guitar lessons, rowing and rugby and cricket, to the whole cold showers and discipline of prep and boarding school? If at home I hadn’t a group of children of mixed ages and classes to play with in open spaces and woodlands and lakes? Climbing trees and swimming and pretend war games is what these kids should have had, not urban and concrete and parents stoned or drunk in the corner of a shit hole small flat. They should have been out gorging themselves on blackberries not nicking sweets and going up to the Porch for a food box because their Mum spent the money on smack again.

Okay, so Paul’s Mum fed me when Mummy spent the money Dad gave for food on gin or weed again.

A few hours ago I hated these kids, called them shits and wanted the full force of the law thrown at them.

Now I’m not sure.

I want to blame their parents.

But why are they addicts?

How far back do we go?

 

~

 

It took hours to run the gang to ground. There were not in Grandpoint Nature Reserve as such, but had gone over a footbridge to the wild land the other side of the train tracks. I believe it belongs to a college, but somewhere in the scrub and woodland was their camp. It took eleven uniform, the helicopter and Peterson’s ninjas in the end.

The rumour was true. 

They had a gun.

It turned out to be a replica. But uniform were not to know that when it was pulled on DS Jones.

 

~

 

Swabs were taken. It was a waiting game. The labs results on my body had already come back and five separate DNA fingerprints isolated from my stomach contents. I thought I’d puked it up, but obviously, and now thankfully, not all of it. The DNA on the saliva too proved that Peterson was certainly telling the truth about the lack of coercion on his part.

I wonder...

If I had lived...

Alan was all right really. Not my Robbie. But he hadn’t wanted me...

I might have ended up being a stepfather to five children. Dad would have liked that. He had long ago resigned himself to not being a grandfather when I talked about being a priest, and as he told DCI Barnaby, he knew I was gay.

Probably before I did from what he said. Since I was a little boy he said. I’d love to know how.

Once upon a time I would say that Augustus knew too, and that was why. Now I know that it’s not like that. My sexuality, my feelings, my wishes were all irrelevant. My sometimes neglectful mother, my childhood bereavement, these were useful tools, making it easier to groom me.

As was poor Paul’s stutter. Although that is a bit of a chicken and an egg situation, really, isn’t it?

 

~

It’s gone nine o’clock at night when all the interviews are done and social workers have arrived to take the children to secure custody until court tomorrow morning for their remand. Michael Irons from Oxford CPS has arrived with his assistant Martha Tyler and are holed up in Innocent’s office with Barnaby. Jones has gone for a drink with Hooper and Julie, to be treated no doubt to reminiscences of me.

I was at school with Michael. He was two years above me, head boy before me. He also, aged 17, spread rumours about me. He had somehow found out I was on a full scholarship and my father worked for the National Trust looking after woodland and we lived in the tiniest of tied cottages.

I denied it.

He had truth on his side.

I had sneering arrogance and the sheer bravado to pull off the wounded, put upon boy who has no idea why someone would lie so horribly.

Ever since he moved here we avoided each other, both ashamed of our horrible teenage behaviour, I think.

But now I listen to him. He is determined to get a conviction. With all the DNA and forensics – my DNA on bikes, skateboard, rollarblades, their clothing; witnesses of those who have received my stolen goods, both the boys and the manager of Cash Converters and plus of course the full confession of three of them in tears and the repeated denial of the youngest that he didn’t want anything to do with it, he only kept watch...

Oh, that boy is good. Convincing. I would believe him, if I’d not heard the way he egged them on with ‘fuck the bitch’ and ‘he was gonna fucking jump anyway. Let’s help the nob-scoffing pig’!

What will happen to him?

Will he even get a custodial sentence?

Everyone thinks his big brother is the leader of the gang.

 

~

 

“I can’t believe it,” Martha is saying to Michael as they walked away. “Poor DS Hathaway. Will we have any problems, do you think, securing a conviction?”

“I can see defence arguing he was drunk.”

“That he consented?”

“We need to keep the other sexual activity of that weekend out. It can’t be admissible in court for the defence to use.”

“But even then...”

“Both pathologists are fairly certain the kidney was ruptured before the forced oral sex. Then there is the bruising to the oesophagus. As long as the right DNA comes back from the swabs, I have no doubt.”

“And we will have them by tomorrow in court?”

“We should. And you’re right. Poor, poor James. I must send his father a card. I was at school with him...”

“Really? You kept that quiet.”

“Yeah, well I was a total shit to him. I’ve been ashamed, not known whether to apologize or not...”

I forgive you Michael. We are all total shits in our teens.

But he can’t hear me.

And I don’t follow him.

Instead I just run out of the station. Where I’m going I have no idea.

 

~

 

I can go anywhere. Walk anywhere. Through anything.

I’m so bored.

And alone.

I walk through the streets full of tourists looking for somewhere to eat or drink and students out for the night. I walk past the silent walk on extras, past faceless people who work in the shops and offices, in cafes and bars and restaurants, the cleaners and nurses and social workers all going home or to work or meeting friends or out on a date. I walk past the homeless, the Big Issue sellers, the buskers and the pathetic, huddled in blankets in shop doorways with their dogs. The dogs can see me and I smile at them.

I walk and walk up through St Giles and up the Banbury Road. Dons and Fellows drive past on the way home, as do doctors and consultants and no doubt more office and shop workers, bank tellers and waiters and barristas on bus after bus. People walk past on the way to buy a pint of milk, a loaf of bread, something for tea, the takeaway chips or pizza. They walk past with dogs on the way to the park or meadow; the dogs wag their tails to me.

Sally drowned trying to pull out my Mum. Lucie came with us to the NT woodland and loved it. Gracie was my auntie’s disabled assistance dog and went out with her when she was able to get out and about in her motorized scooter. When she got to ill, Gracie retired and every holiday we went for long walks.

Do dogs go to heaven?

Will I go to heaven?

Am I trapped here for good?


	13. Chapter 13

Cats can obviously see me too. Monty hisses at me, surprised. He comes to see me and sneezes at the lack of scent. He tries to rub around my legs and passes through. Alarmed, he scoots away and jumps onto Robbie’s lap.

“What’s spooked him?” a man I take to be his son-in-law asks.

“Search me,” he replies, but he looks to where Monty looks.

Lyn walks in. “Right, that’s the little one asleep. Now for you Dad.”

“I’m not a bloody invalid,” he grumbles, but allows Lyn to lead him to bed.

He lies down after Lyn has gone, telling her he’ll read a while. Instead he looks at pictures of me on his phone and cries.

“Oh James lad. Why was I such a bastard?”

I don’t know. I wish I did.

I walk in front of his mirror but he can’t see me. Instead I lie next to him on my side of the bed.

Except it must be Laura Hobson’s side now.

Of course, she finished with him. She won’t be used. She has far too much self-respect.

Unlike me.

 

~

 

I could stay there all night but I wander back to his living room.

“Oh Tim,” his daughter is saying, curled up on our sofa in her husband’s arms. “Did he ever really love my Mum? Did he just use her? How many men did he sleep with when Mum was alive? Do you think she knew?”

Oh Lyn. He loved your Mum. He has never stopped loving your Mum. And as far as I can tell he was totally, utterly faithful to her.

This is what he said, wasn’t it? If he was with me his children would wonder is he ever loved his wife. Valerie Lewis. The love of his life the way he was the love of mine.

“I think your Dad loved your Mum very much,” Tim soothes, stroking her hair. “I think he is bisexual. I like your Dad, he’s a good man; he wouldn’t have cheated on your Mum.”

“He cheated on Laura though, didn’t he?”

“No Lyn. He cheated on James.”

She frowns just like her Dad, trying to puzzle it out.

I like Tim.

I go back to our bedroom and curl up next to him. Monty joins us, looking at me suspiciously a while but deciding I’m tolerable in spirit form, just as he decided I was tolerable and then warm when I slept over on the sofa and then decided to tolerate me in his human’s bed. The first time I caught him staring unblinking at us when we made love he spooked me a bit too, I can tell you.

Well, we are even now then Monty.

He decided eventually to tolerate his human’s new mate in time. Eventually accepting me as another human that would feed him and provide with warmth and comfort. He would vanish when we made love but always returned when we got to post-coital cuddling, just to share in it.

He also now tolerates Robbie kneading his fur and even allows a small cuddle before swiping with a clawed paw to just show who is boss. But he moves no further than to curl up by the back of his knees, staring straight at me, twitching his tail. Robbie starts to cuddle the pillow, but then throws it on the floor with a yell of frustration, swearing.

Monty bolts.

“Smells of her! Not of him!” he explains to Lyn, who has come to check he is all right. He is so angry with himself.

“Oh Dad...” she lets out sadly.

“Perhaps I’ll have that sleeping pill the quack gave me, eh pet?”

 

~

 

I wake up. I’ve slept again. 

I’ve also moved.

Sleep walking – floating – disapparating? – seems to be a real problem.

I’m in my own bed. Someone is snoring.

Dad!

I sit up. The sheets are changed. Boxes and bags are everywhere. Filled with clothes and books and everything. My life. Packed up for charity and some for memories to go to his bungalow.

It’s daylight outside.

Shit!

My alarm clock says it’s seven minutes past ten.

I’m due in court.

Well, okay, I’m not due anywhere. I’m dead.

Late.

Already late wherever I go.

I start to run out of the house, down the street, past mums in Asian suits with buggies and elderly men with long grey beards and walking sticks and out on to the busy Cowley Road full of Asians, Africans, Goths, hippies, punks and Brookes students. I run past the man who rants about the Bible and the Day of Judgement...

Stop! You’re wrong! And you don’t help the rest of us...

Past the smackhead begging from the gaggle of Spanish language school students who look intimidated...

A bus!

I leap and find myself sailing through metal and glass and I’m onboard.

I don’t get off obediently with the living at the top of the High. Instead I stay on as it turns into St Aldates.

I jump off at the courthouse.

I mean, what am I going to do? 

Die?

Oh. Right. I already have.

 

~

 

I have missed it.

Michael and Martha look quite happy. I follow, trying to listen.

It seems that all eight have been remanded to secure facilities until the trial and that the DNA swabs have come back with a positive match not just for my stomach but for my clothing and external body from all eight of them as well as my DNA all over their clothing, bikes, skateboard and rollarblades. And then they have confessions, now of two more who broke down in court this morning.

“It’s all a fairly safe conviction,” Martha says.

“Let’s not count our chickens. We still have to prevent his mental state and previous sexual encounters from being admissible.”

But as I start to panic Michael reassures Martha that it is very unlikely they won’t. After all, what circuit judge hasn’t met me when I’ve given evidence as a DS?

“Justice is blind. But she peeps a bit when an officer is down,” Michael says and I remember why I had a crush on him before he turned on me so horribly all those years ago at school.

 

~

 

I don’t know what to do. Am I just to roam Oxford forever? Where is this light that was for the girl and the old woman? Do I wait for my funeral? They didn’t.

I know that the little bastards who raped and killed me are going to be punished. That Laura and Robbie are apart. That he regrets his treatment of me.

Am I to forgive him? 

I want to.

I want to heal us.

But how?

 

~

 

I leave the courthouse and cross the road to the station. Barnaby and Jones are gathering their few possessions left in our office. Innocent is with them, frowning at the most lovely little black and white terrier. He wags his tail at me. I can’t stroke him so I smile.

“Thank you so much Chief Inspector.”

“My... well, I won’t say my pleasure because this has been a disturbing case, not only because of the fact he was one of ours. Although I think I have lost myself a very good possible replacement for Jones.”

“Yes, I did recommend him.”

“It’s been my privilege to work with your team Chief Superintendent. Please pass on my thanks to all who have assisted. They all deserve a commendation in how they have restrained themselves in such difficult circumstances. I can’t praise Gurdip Sohal and Julie Lockhart highly enough. Now there is a young woman who I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see in CID very soon, nor taking her sergeant’s exams.”

“No,” says Innocent thoughtfully.

They leave and I could follow, but instead I sit down at my desk. I can’t really stay here. Haunt my place of work.

Well, why not? I spend the best part of the last seven years of my life here. Where else would I haunt?

Haunt.

I don’t want to be a ghost that haunts.

I don’t want to be a ghost.

My head starts to buzz and tingle and itch like it did that first day. I can’t believe this is actually my third day dead!

I need to be somewhere, that is what this buzzing means.

But this is different.

Almost as if...

“James. James Hathaway!”

Someone is calling....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really, really did not plan this to go on long this, but Hathaway has a lot to say. Thanks to the readers who have stuck with this, however dark. Any comments welcome! This is all I have back from my beta so I may not post the rest for a while, or if I do it will be full of errors, so I apologize in advance.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No beta on this chapter. And apologies for random text in last few chapters. i think I've sorted it out now but if anyone notices chunks of text from previous chapters or random text from other things, like letters, please message me on LJ or comment here. My Word prog has gremlins :-(

Oh.

I have no idea where I am!

I’m in a sitting room of a normal house. It’s gloomy, despite the bright sunshine outside; with far two many pot plants, particularly lots of ferns, including many in the window, which is covered by thick, yellowing net curtains.

There is a circular table with tarot cards laid out. A purple candle is lit and burns in the centre of the table. Quartz crystals surround the candle and the tarot. A pair of hands – a woman’s hands - are flat on the table. She has deep purple nail polish and heavy silver rings. She has long dark blonde hair and is quite um plump really. She is wearing some sort of dark baggy top and loose cardigan.

There are other hands on the other side of the table. Hands I recognize so well.

Why?

Oh!

It’s the mad cat killer from earlier this year.

“Mad cat killer. That’s not nice. I was ill.”

Sorry.

Shit, she is really genuine then.

“Of course I am.”

“What, what is going on?”

“James is here Robbie.”

“Oh right, and I believe that because...”

You’re right Sir. I do miss you now I’m gone.

She repeats it.

“Ah! Shit. It’s him. James. My James? I’m so sorry.”

I’m not really your James, am I? You finished with me.

“Ah lad, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I never thought I could hurt you so much, that you would...”

I didn’t! I didn’t Sir. Please believe me. If those fucking little shits...

Justine gasps as if she is suddenly aware of how I died!

... hadn’t found me I would have gone home, shredded the letter, cleared away all the knives and tablets and tidied the flat. I would have still been hurt and still cried, but...

“What pet?"

“I’d have said yes. To you still seeing me. I love you so much.”

“I was a complete selfish bastard. You shouldn’t have said yes, love. You shouldn’t have let me get away with treating you like that. I think I would have dropped Laura soon enough. Or she would have got bored of me. She’s dumped me now. She’s angry for you love.”

I know.

“You do?”

I’ve been watching. For a long time I stayed with my body so I saw all Dr. Hobson’s reactions. I’m so, so sorry Sir. I’ve hurt you. I’ve made you sick. I gave you a heart attack.

“I broke yours pet. Fair’s fair. I have nothing to forgive. You need to forgive me but I expect you can’t, the complete and utter shit I was to you.”

Oh Sir... I forgive you. I love you. I always will.

“Wait for me James.”

How can I? Mrs Lewis has a prior claim on you.

“It’s different on the other side,” Justine says gently.

“I love you James. I’m so sorry I was scared to let the world know that. Do you forgive me?”

Yes. Of course. Do you forgive me for being a stupid drama queen with my childish suicide gestures?

“James, I caused that. You mustn’t blame yourself.”

And for cheating on you?

He makes a ‘it’s nothing gesture’ and then asks, “Did you suffer much?”

Oh Sir. I was terrified. I was in so much pain. As for the fall...

“It’s okay James, don’t remember...”

Sir. You mustn’t believe Terence Smith. Tel was behind it all. He’s the youngest but he goaded the others into all they did to me. I don’t know how you do it, but please tell Michael and Martha they must prosecute him too. I know he’s only ten but he’s evil.

“James pet...”

“He told them to rape me and to throw me off the top. But Sir, I was dying already. They ruptured my kidney and...”

“Don’t remember James,” Justine interrupts after repeating what I had said.

“Yes James, Justine is right. We have them all in custody. I will somehow get CPS to look at prosecuting all eight. But tell me again, you do forgive me for using you and hurting you. I do love you so much.”

I love you too Sir.

“It’s Robbie.”

“I love you Robbie. I forgive you. I understand. Of course I do. You know all about my own Catholic guilt, don’t you? Forgive me...”

“There’s nothing to forgive. I had hurt you so much when I knew how vulnerable you were deep down.”

“Look James,” Justine says gently.

The light I saw for the girl and the elderly woman is appearing in front of Justine’s ferns and spider plants.

“Go James. You can go now,” she says softly.

Sir. Robbie. Promise me something.

“Anything James.”

Look after my Dad for me.

“Oh James. Of course...”

Someone walks out of the light. It’s...

Mummy! It’s my Mum!

“Go James,” Justine says again gently and I see her put her hand on Robbie’s to let him know he has to let go now. I look at him one more time before turning to my Mum and running to the light, down through a tunnel of light. 

As I do I seem to lose height and age and as I reach her I’m as I was when I was seven years old. She picks me up and spins me around, showering me in kisses.

As we spin I grow up again and when we let go of each other I’m much taller that she is.

We smile at each other.

“My James,” she says, “what a beautiful young man you’ve grown into.”

She takes my hand and we are in beautiful English countryside on a perfect summer’s day and in that moment I think not so much of the Bible or of Church teaching but of the final scene of the final book of the Narnia series, the Final Battle.

Two women walk towards us. The first I know immediately. It’s my auntie! But she is so well and whole and unlike she was in the last years of her life. We hug. I’m so pleased to see her.

The second woman I also recognize. From photos. She takes my hand.

“James. If you would like, you can wait with me. Would you like that? We’ll wait for him together.”

“But Mrs Lewis...”

“Valerie. No surnames here James. We can wait together and love him together.”

“But...”

“James, sweetheart. You far more than I ever could have been, were made for Robbie. You are Robbie’s there and here, then and now and when.”

I always knew I was made for him. I smile awkwardly.

“Yes. I’d like that. I will wait with you for him. If I may?”

 

~

 

Robbie Lewis stands awkwardly after laying the lilies on James’ grave. He’s in the same Oxford cemetery that Valerie is in and now he comes to visit both of them. Today it was orchids for his Val, and white lilies for James, as he knew how much he liked them. It’s been three weeks now since the funeral and the grave is still a bare mound of earth. He remembers from Val that it will take a long time to grow the grass, to look more like part of the place and less like an ugly scar. Like the grief in the heart – the ugly rip of pain forms a scar and eventually blends in to be part of the heart, a pain you carry but can live with.

A man is walking towards them – him. He must remember James is not really here. Only his remains. His poor, smashed, violated remains.

The man is tall but walks stooped over a stick. He still has a full head of hair, although it is grey rather than the blond Robbie can tell it once would have been. He looks too much like James, although this man is more ruggedly handsome than the softer, prettier features of James.

“Inspector Lewis?” the man asks.

“It’s just Mr. Lewis now. Robbie. I’ve retired. Are you James’ father?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry for you loss.”

“And I am sorry for yours Mr. Lewis... Robbie. I don’t know what James had told you about me, but I was much more accepting that he ever thought. I would have been happy to call you son-in-law.”

“Ah, I don’t deserve that. I was awful to your son.”

“But here you are?”

“I loved him. I love him.”

Jonathon lays his flowers, sweet smelling orange jasmine, with the lilies. He tried to stoop but Robbie stops him and puts them with his lilies in the vase and waters them again.

“Can I buy you a drink Mr. Hathaway?”

“I’m teetotal.”

“A coffee then?”

“Yes. All right. Thank you.”

“An’ you can tell me what my James was like as a boy. If it’s not too painful for you?”

“I would love to talk about him. Keep him in my mind.”

“An’ mine Mr. Hathaway.”

“It’s Jon.”

“And I’m Robbie.”

They walk back towards the car park slowly, at James’ father’s pace, away from the fresh new grave of James Hathaway.

**Author's Note:**

> James quotes the Bible, Matthew 11.28.
> 
> John Barnaby quotes Mother Teresa.
> 
> I am not a Catholic, or even a Christian, and I apologize if James’ prayerful thoughts and meditations are in any way wrong or misrepresentative or give offence. None was intended, rather the fact that in the end, his faith was stronger than his misery and despair and suicidal thoughts.


End file.
